


(when you just can't seem) to shake the weight of living

by WingedQuill



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, That's it that's the plot, Witchers are all mind-controlled to stay on the path
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:48:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23416249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: Geralt's muscles heave backwards, flinging him down against the bed. He tries to struggle upwards but it feels like he’s been buried beneath a mountain. Every inch of him is pressed completely still. His eyes close, and he’s left in the dark with nothing but his racing heart for company. He’s not tired, he’s never been less tired. But the curse wants him to sleep, it seems. It’ll force him to lie here until he does. How much of his life will it start to control, now that he’s declared war against it? Now that he knows it’s lurking in his bones, now that it doesn’t have to be subtle?He swallows. Takes a long, deep breath, gathering every bit of courage he has to stop himself from slipping back into panic. He still has control over his lungs. He still has that.For now.(Or: Witchers don't retire. They stay on the Path until it kills them. They hunt monsters and they want nothing from life. This isn't exactly by choice.)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 514
Kudos: 1008





	1. there's an albatross around your neck

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the discord server for listening to me ramble about this concept and giving me some great suggestions. Y'all rock and I love you.

It starts like this—

Pavetta vomits on the floor. The room goes silent. All eyes are on Geralt and all he can think is that he’s going to be a father. He’s going to be responsible for the tiny ball of life growing in the princess’s womb, he’s going to have a child when he’d thought it was impossible. Happiness explodes in his chest and he wants to run forward, wants to kneel beside Pavetta and claim his place in this family, wants to stay in Cintra and be there for the birth, wants—

There’s a jolt of pain, burning like lightning through his veins. A scream rises in his chest but it gets stuck somewhere in his throat, silencing him. And then the pain flicks out, as suddenly as it came, and he’s left confused and trembling, staring at the princess with wide eyes.

 _I’ll be there for you,_ he thinks. _For him. Or her._ He opens his mouth to speak those very words.

“Fuck,” he says. He turns around and walks away.

 _What?_ What is he doing? He tries to drag his feet, tries to fight against the force heaving him onwards, but there _is_ no force. It’s just his own limbs, refusing to listen to his brain.

_What’s happening to me, what’s—?_

He walks, and he grumbles, and he leaves behind his chance at a family. Something sinks into his chest, heavy and cold. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

***

It starts like this—

He’s hunkered down in his bedroll, in a patch of forest two miles away from Blaviken. His body is singing with soreness, a dozen bruises blooming on his arms, back, chest. All he can hear are the quick-sharp huffs of his own frantic breaths as he tries to pull himself back from the brink of panic.

He’d just been trying to _help_ , he’d been trying to save them, and they attacked him, and they stoned him, and they called him a butcher.

 _Why_ is he still doing this?

As soon as the thought forms in his brain, it’s slipping away, chased out of his consciousness by a burst of pain. He groans, biting into his arm as his nerves roar with fire. _Fuck,_ where had that come from?

That thought slides out of his mind too. He doesn’t wonder at the pain for more than a second. He doesn’t remember it for more than a minute. The afterimages of the shock settle somewhere in his subconscious, an unknown but still-heeded warning.

Sleep tugs at his eyes and he curls up on his side, wrapping his arms around himself. He’ll be fine. He just needs to keep moving, get somewhere far away from Blaviken, start taking contracts again. This won’t follow him forever. It won’t always be this bad. And if it is, well, this is what he was made for, isn’t it?

Something in his mind purrs in approval and he falls asleep with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

***

It starts like this—

He’s been a witcher for two years, and he often thinks about leaving the Path, about doing something different with his life _(like what? What would you even do? What else are you good for?)._ Each bout of fancy ends the same. A jolt of pain. A frantic flurry of confusion. Then all thoughts of leaving are wiped away, drained from his mind like wine from a barrel.

Eventually, he abandons his childhood fantasies. He’s a witcher. Witchers don’t retire. They walk the Path, they hunt, they die.

Something settles in his skull, and a ghost of someone else’s satisfaction twitches through his muscles.

***

It starts like this—

Geralt is a child and his life has so many possible paths, stretching before him like a great tree. He loves to talk and create and play make-believe, and his mother always says he’ll be an excellent artist, singer, writer, sculptor. Even when the witchers take him, he thinks that he can make beautiful things, someday. After he’s killed enough monsters. Surely he’ll have enough stories to inspire him.

He believes he has a choice in his own future right up until the trials.

Something shifts then. A change he won't recognize until he’s walking away from a child he wants nothing more than to claim as his own. But something shifts in that room, right?

Where they—  
Where he—

What had they _done_ to him?

The thought slips out of his brain before he can grab ahold of it, but the uneasiness lingers for years to come.

***

It starts again and again and again. Every time he dreams of something different, every time he resists what the world has planned for him, every time he gives in to the easy painlessness of letting his mind empty out. It starts dozens of times. Hundreds, even. And each of these hundreds of times are meaningful, but they’re not important. What’s important is how it ends.

***

It ends like this.

He sits in the inn after the banquet, clutching at his medallion with shaking fingers. And he wants to rip it away and throw it out the window, wants to shuck off his swords and his armor and pick up something else, wants, wants, wants—

There’s a surge of agony, racing through his body and setting every nerve alight. He gasps, thin and wavery, but he can’t scream. He can’t move. For a moment, he is entirely still, a tree in the middle of a forest fire, capable of nothing but burning.

He lets go of the medallion. It falls back against his chest. The fire licks through his veins one last time, and then it’s snuffed out. He’s left gasping for air, staring down at his body with a numb, dawning horror.

All those times that he had stayed on the Path, despite it hurting him time and time again, despite the world chewing him up and spitting him out like a bit of prey.

All those times he had insisted on taking contracts back to back to back, ignoring the pain of his still-healing wounds.

All those times he had scoffed at the idea of being something else. Today, even. _Do witchers ever retire? Yeah. When they slow and get killed._

He’d thought he’d been making a choice. Doing something good. Something noble. Something difficult and painful that no one else could do.

But it hadn’t been a choice at all, had it?

At that thought, there’s another wave of agony. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth and forces himself to _think._ Because whatever this is, it doesn’t want him to think about this. Which means that he has to.

He’s stayed a witcher all these years, despite the fact that he had despised that idea as a child. _Ten years on the path,_ he’d said to Eskel, when they’d both been young and dumb and dreaming. _Maybe twenty. And then I’m gonna do something else._ And now here he is, eighty years later and still hunting monsters. He doesn’t want—

The pain peaks in his head, a furious bonfire. He clenches his hands into fists and finishes the thought.

_I don't want to be a witcher. I never did._

The pain retreats. He doesn’t relax. It hasn’t left him alone, he thinks. It’s just biding its time. He takes a steadying breath and grabs on tightly to his mind. He won’t let this slip away from him. Not again.

He doesn’t want to be a witcher. But in that room, where they made his bones stronger and his blood toxic and every sense as sharp as a knife, they also set to work at his mind. Clipping away at the tree of his life until there was only one path stretching before him, all other options buried beneath a wall of rock, all other branches cut away and left to rot.

The door creaks open, and Geralt looks up from his legs as Jaskier saunters into the room.

“Gods above, what a day,” he groans, hefting two large mugs of ale in his hands. “Got a present for you. Thought you could use some strong ale in a time like this.”

 _When I said I need nothing, I didn’t mean it,_ he wants to say.

 _I don’t think my mind’s my own,_ he wants to say.

 _Something’s wrong,_ he wants to say.

 _Help me,_ he wants to say.

“I could,” he says, plucking a mug from Jaskier’s hand.

_No. No, that’s not what he wanted to do, why—?_

“Cheers,” Jaskier mutters, clinking their glasses together. He takes a long sip then casts a sideways glance at Geralt. Foam bubbles on his upper lip, and Geralt wants to reach over and wipe it away. Instead, he takes a swig of his ale.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

_Yes. Yes. Just say yes, you stupid fucking—_

“No.”

It’s like he’s lost all control of his body, like some great puppet master has reached down and grabbed him, moving his lips and his limbs at their whim. Just like at the banquet, when he had turned away from Pavetta despite wanting to do the opposite with every fiber of his being. Fear sloshes in his stomach, rises like a wave in his throat. _This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening._

“You could claim her, you know?” Jaskier says.

“I _said_ I didn’t want to talk about it.” His voice is harsh. Biting. Snarling with disdain he doesn’t feel. Jaskier ducks his head, licks the foam off his lip.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, Geralt.”

He reaches for Geralt’s shoulder but the _thing_ that’s taken over Geralt’s body shrugs him off. A flash of hurt flits over his face, and Geralt wants to scream, wants to rage, wants to reach inside his mind and find whatever the masters had planted there. Wants to rip it out by the roots. But he just scowls into his ale, ignoring his friend as he stands and walks to the door.

“I’m gonna go back downstairs,” Jaskier says. “Play a few more songs, earn a bit more coin. Try to get some sleep.”

_Help me. Please, for the love of everything holy, just **help me.**_

Geralt says nothing. Jaskier sighs. The door closes.

The puppet master lets Geralt go and he slumps forward, the mug of ale tipping out of his hands and smashing on the floor. He barely notices the sound of breaking glass. Panic buzzes around his ears, drowning out all other noise. He clutches at his hair with trembling hands, gasps desperately for air. Gods. Gods, that wasn’t him, that _hadn’t been_ _him_ , he hadn’t had _any_ control.

He’d fought through the—the curse _,_ that’s what this is, his masters had fucking _cursed_ him—the curse’s hold on his brain, had managed to untangle a few traitorous thoughts and it had retaliated by seizing control of his body.

And he can’t even ask for help.

Another man might start to cry at that realization. But Geralt hasn’t cried since the trials, and—and that’s part of the curse too, isn’t it? Just another method of control, another part of himself taken and twisted and locked away.

Rage boils in his chest, burning away the panic. He had been a _child._ He had been a little kid, and they had broken his mind and snatched away his future without a second thought. And it isn’t just him, is it? How many other witchers are living like this? Forced to walk the path until their death, kept in their place through pain and shattered memories.

He can’t stand for this.

He won’t stand for this.

He’ll figure out some way to break the curse. He’ll tear it out of him piece by piece if he has to. He will take back the child he had been, and then he’ll free his brothers. He’ll—

His muscles heave backwards, flinging him down against the bed. He tries to struggle upwards but it feels like he’s been buried beneath a mountain. Every inch of him is pressed completely still. His eyes close, and he’s left in the dark with nothing but his racing heart for company. He’s not tired, he’s never been less tired. But the curse wants him to sleep, it seems. It’ll force him to lie here until he does. How much of his life will it start to control, now that he’s declared war against it? Now that he knows it’s lurking in his bones, now that it doesn’t have to be subtle?

He swallows. Takes a long, deep breath, gathering every bit of courage he has to stop himself from slipping back into panic. He still has control over his lungs. He still has that.

For now.


	2. all the things you've said

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the warm reception on chapter one! <3 Your comments made my day, I really appreciate them. Hope you enjoy part two just as much!

Two days later, Geralt is nursing a tankard of ale in a dingy tavern on the outskirts of Cintra. Jaskier flutters around the bar, procuring them a room and wheedling an agreement from the innkeeper that he can play that night. Geralt props his head on his chin and watches him, watches the way his hands flash as he speaks, watches the way his tongue pokes out between his teeth as he laughs. There’s a familiarity to his movements, his posture. Geralt thinks he could recognize him even in a dim and crowded room, simply by his body language.

That realization slips something warm into his stomach. At some point, when he hadn’t been paying attention, Jaskier had wheedled his way into his life, had become important to Geralt in a way that so few people had. Had wormed in behind his walls _(and were those walls really his, or were they constructed by the curse?)_ and made a home in Geralt’s heart. Refused to leave.

He had tended to Geralt’s wounds and sang Geralt’s life easier and asked him, quiet and gentle, what he wanted from his life. And they didn’t always travel together, but Geralt knows that if he only asks, Jaskier will gladly follow him to the end of the world. It’s why he comes back to Jaskier, time and time again, asking him to join him for a month or two on the road. He’s a calm port at the edge of a stormy sea.

Geralt has never had a home. Not since Kaer Morhen—and he doesn’t know if he can call that place home anymore. Not when he knows the full extent of what they did to him. He’s never had a home, but he knows that homes are places. Cottages and castles, villages and cities. A warm hearth and a familiar smell. Homes aren’t people.

But what if they are?

What if his home is a gentle smile and a gentler word, a bright burst of song, colorful clothes, confidence, a flash of yellow flowers? He thinks it might be. And he’s confused. Because he’s traveled with Jaskier for years at this point without thinking any of this, and now he thinks _he_ might want to follow _Jaskier_ to the end of the world, and where had that come from?

At that thought, there’s a flash of pain, running lightning-sharp down his spine, setting his nerves alight from skull to toes. His fingers spasm around the handle of his glass and he sucks in a short gasp through his teeth, keeping every muscle tense as the fire ebbs away. _Fuck._

He’s grown familiar with the shocks over the past few days. He always _had_ been familiar with them, he’s realizing that now, his memory clearing like fog burnt away by the sun. He’d felt the pain hundreds of times, every time he’d thought something the curse doesn’t like, as it gradually warped him into the person his masters wanted him to be.

(Or, no. Not person. Weapon.)

So this. This warm feeling he gets in his chest when he looks at Jaskier.

This is another one of those thoughts he isn’t allowed to think, isn’t it?

Of course it is. The more his mind lingers on it, the more his memories clear. He remembers looking at the bright-eyed bard asking him questions in Posada and being oddly touched by his kindness, he remembers listening to him snarl defensively at the elves and being impressed by his courage. Both of those incidents had only warranted little shocks, his thinking not too deviant, not too dangerous. But then a few months later, when they’d been camping in the forest, Geralt had looked up from sharpening his sword to see Jaskier crouched by the campfire, strumming his lute. His eyes had been closed, his face utterly peaceful, and the firelight had caught his hair _just right,_ and Geralt’s heart had flipped over.

 _I’d leave the Path for him in an instant,_ he’d thought.

That time had _hurt._ The shock had burned and burned, for what must have been thirty full seconds, rippling through his body in a series of pulsing waves. He’d barely been able to think afterwards, staring down at his sword while he tried to get his breath back together, all thoughts of firelight and Jaskier sliding away like water.

It had happened again. And again. Often in the quieter moments, before or after a contract, when Jaskier was smiling to himself beside a fire or wine-flushed and singing his heart out in front of a crowd. Every time Geralt had seen him and thought _Oh. I want to be his._

_I love him._

He drops his eyes from Jaskier’s grinning face and stares down at the table, horror churning through his gut. He’s in love with Jaskier. He’s _been_ in love with Jaskier for years, and the curse had burned that out of him every time he’d realized it. Because Jaskier is a threat to his purpose as a witcher, because Jaskier could drag him from the Path with a single word.

There’s another shock, blistering and hot, but he grits his teeth and powers through it. He won’t let this out of his head. Not again. He’s _keeping_ this. The curse spits and snarls furiously, licking lightning up his skin, but it’s not strong enough to tear out his love. Not anymore.

It retreats eventually, humming in his nerves, dissatisfied and petulant. He lets himself savor the victory, breathing out slow and calm. It can’t fuck with his mind anymore, so it seems. Not now when he’s realized it’s there, not now when he’s actively fighting it. He’ll purge it from his body too, eventually. If he just takes this bit by bit, day by day, memory by reclaimed memory.

He’ll beat it. He’ll _win._

“Hey. Witcher.”

His skin crawls at the word but he lifts his head to face the man standing in front of his table. Mud covered legs. Eyes bugging out of his head with fear. Trembling all over. Monster attack. In a swamp. Drowners, most likely. Barely escaped with his life. Geralt catalogs the information quickly and efficiently, and opens his mouth to tell the man to fuck off.

“How can I help?”

_Shit._

The curse is back to manipulating his body, it seems. Moving his lips and vocal cords to its whim. Geralt wants to scream. He’s exhausted, and he’s _scared_ , and all he wants to do is watch Jaskier play a few songs before going to bed. Pretend that he’s okay for a little bit longer. But he’s a witcher. And witchers don’t turn down contracts.

The man babbles out the details of the attack, a swamp some two miles outside of the city, about five drowners. They’d killed his horse, and had been distracted enough by the fresh meat that he was able to slip away.

“I’ll deal with it.”

_Please just leave me alone._

A sack of coins is pressed into Geralt’s hand with a sputtered burst of gratitude, and then the man scurries off, presumably to change. And buy a new horse. Geralt’s legs shove him to his feet and propel him towards the door—now? Really? The curse is making him fight the drowners _right now?_

“Geralt!”

He doesn’t turn around, his arm swinging the door open like he hasn’t even noticed Jaskier calling his name. Or like he doesn’t care. He steps out the door and lets it fall closed behind him. There’s an indignant yelp, but the curse ignores it, carrying him forward step by step.

“Geralt!” The voice is reproachful now. There’s a hand on his shoulder. “What’s going on?”

_I’m cursed. I’m cursed. I’m fucking cursed is what’s going on, and I’m in love with you, and I can’t tell you, and—_

“Contract,” he mumbles. Short and to the point. “Drowners. Stay here.”

 _“Stay here?_ But how will I write stories of your glorious battle?”

“No glorious battle. Just a bunch of thrashing around in a swamp.”

The eerie thing is, it’s disturbingly close to what he’d actually say, if he had control. Either this thing is smart enough to imitate him, or his personality, his humor, the way he shapes his words—all of those aspects of himself have been molded by this thing for his entire life. He doesn’t know which of those ideas scares him more.

“Ah, but a true poet can find a story even in the mundane, Geralt,” Jaskier says, and he’s smiling at Geralt, bright and happy and warm, and a fist clenches Geralt’s heart hard enough to burst.

_You’re so beautiful._

“If I see a true poet, I’ll let them know.”

Jaskier gasps, mock-offended, but the smile doesn’t drop from his lips. He thinks Geralt is just teasing him.

“The _nerve!_ I’ll have you know I graduated with highest honors from Oxenfurt, and they don’t just give that out to anyone— _hey!”_

Geralt’s legs have started moving again, marching him towards the stables.

“You have no manners,” Jaskier whined. “None at all.”

Geralt doesn’t reply, though a dozen joking retorts burn under his tongue. He loves their back-and-forth, their harmless teasing to pass the time. The curse, it seems, does not.

“Geralt?”

_“What?”_

The word comes out dripping with vitriol as he whirls around and pins Jaskier with a murderous glare. Jaskier freezes in place, his mouth hanging open. Something crumples in his face. Geralt rages against the thing holding his vocal cords in an iron grip. _Stop it, stop it, don’t do this._

“I—”

“I’m _busy,_ bard. I don’t have time for this.”

“That’s not fair—”

“It’s also not fair for me to let a pack of drowners roam free because you’re _distracting me.”_

Jaskier takes a step backward, hurt rippling across his expression. Geralt wants to reach forward and touch him, wants to apologize, wants to wipe that look of pain off his face and never see it again.

“I—I thought I could help.”

_You can. You do. You help me every single day._

He snorts, rolling his eyes.

“Help? Please. You just get in the way.”

Silence. The curse drags him onwards, into the stable. He tacks Roach with quick, efficient hands, not giving her the pets and treats and soothing words he normally showers her with. Gods, this thing won’t even let him show affection to a _fucking horse._

He leads Roach out by the reins. Jaskier is still standing there, frozen in place. His head is ducked towards the ground and he’s biting his lip. When he lifts his head up his eyes are red. But the expression on his face isn’t sad. It’s angry. He takes a deep breath, like he’s gathering his thoughts.

“I get in the way? Geralt, I’ve dragged you from beneath a monster’s corpse, bruised and bloodied, more times than I can count. I’ve given you potions, stitched you up, carried you to a healer. I’m the reason you’re not dead a dozen times over.”

_You are. You are. I owe you my life. I owe you so much. Thank you._

“Survived fine before you.”

“That’s the most shocking thing I’ve heard all month.”

He steps forward, puts a hand on Geralt’s chest.

“What’s wrong? This isn’t like you.”

_You’re right, this isn’t like me, come on Jask, you’re smart—_

“Nothing. Just too tired to deal with you right now.”

It’s the worst thing he could have said.

Once, when they’d been lying together in an inn, slightly tipsy from too much celebratory mead, their talk had turned to fears. Geralt had admitted a childhood fear of the dark—one that had long since been wiped away—and Jaskier had said that his worst fear, the thing he dreaded above all else, was abandonment. People getting sick of him, tired of him, throwing him aside when he got too inconvenient.

Jaskier looks at Geralt like he’d just slapped him in the face, confused and hurt. He opens his mouth. Closes it.

“Okay. Okay.”

He swallows, blinking rapidly.

“Okay, Geralt, I’ll—” His voice breaks and Geralt feels part of himself break with it. “I’ll go. Give you some space. Seems like the child surprise thing…got to you a bit. I get it.”

_Don’t leave. Please don’t leave me with this thing, I’m begging you, there’s something wrong, you know I’d never use what you told me against you like this. Figure it out, figure it out, please, please, **don’t leave me.**_

Because with Jaskier gone, there’ll be nobody to notice that he isn't himself. With Jaskier gone, there’ll be nothing to make his days even a little bit easier, a little bit brighter. With Jaskier gone, he’ll be completely alone.

“Good,” he says. He swings himself up onto Roach and kicks her into a trot, far harder than his usual light nudge. She snorts and veers out of the inn’s courtyard, leaving Jaskier behind in a cloud of dust.

The curse doesn’t even let him look back.


	3. and the things you've done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter: threatened animal cruelty/death. The curse does not like Roach very much :(
> 
> Also, I just realized I haven't mentioned it until now, the fic and chapter titles are taken from the lyrics of Bastille's "Weight of Living, Pt 1." Go give it a listen if you don't know it, it's very good!

Geralt tries not to take contracts. He fights the monster lurking in his bones with every inch of his consciousness, wrestling desperately for the reins that control his limbs and voice. But it’s like trying to grab at drowner’s skin, slippery and cloaked in cold black water, falling away as soon as he thinks he has a grasp on it. He’ll think, for brief flashes, that he has control over himself, and then he opens his mouth to tell a desperate villager _no_ and instead he says _how much?_

And he thinks the curse is growing steadily more furious at him.

He doesn’t know _how_ this thing can have emotions, because it’s not a living creature, just a set of commands embedded in his body. But perhaps it’s just the ghost of whatever elder witcher cast the spell, his fury that a disciple would dare try to fight against him. In any case, he can feel the anger growing, burning through him in increasingly painful shocks every time he thinks about the prospect of freedom. Each time, he grits his teeth and rides it out, refusing to let the thoughts out of his brain.

_I don’t want to be a witcher._

Shock.

_I want to be free._

Shock.

_Someday I’m going to get out of this._

Shock. Shock. _Shock._ Agony washes over him in waves and he breathes, steady and slow, and thinks of the crashing ocean.

The shocks are a sign that freedom was possible. This curse wouldn’t be trying to control his mind if he didn’t have any hope of fighting it, if it could seize control of his body for good. It’s trying to muffle his protests and drag him back to the half-wakefulness he’d lived in before, when he’d let it correct his thinking and wipe away all traces of deviance, when it hadn’t needed to force his limbs because he did exactly what it wanted anyway. It’s trying to make him give up the fight.

So he needs to fight harder.

After a few months of unsuccessful attempts to turn down contracts, he curls up in bed and refuses to budge. He can't find a contract if he doesn't move on to the next town, after all. The curse sends pain rippling through his veins, but he grits his teeth and clenches his hands around the pillow, pouring every inch of concentration into staying _here,_ don’t move, keep every limb on the mattress and _don’t get—_

He swings his legs over the side of the bed.

_—up._

The shocks subside as the curse snatches away control of his limbs, steering him over to his pack in the corner and gathering up his belongings efficiently. A sick horror yawns in Geralt’s stomach as he watches his hands move on their own. The texture of the clothing beneath his fingertips is the only reminder that they’re even his, that he’s not just watching someone else pack away his things.

It never gets easier, is the thing. He’s been aware of this monster for almost a year now, and it takes over whenever he fights it too hard, but he still can’t choke back the all-consuming terror of his body not being _his._ Each time feels like that first, horrible moment in Cintra.

He breathes, and breathes, and watches numbly as his body finishes packing and strides out of the inn, stalking to the stables and tacking Roach. She huffs and pulls back on her reins, staring at him with wide, scared eyes. Like she knows it isn’t him, not really.

_Smart girl. Good girl._

The curse pushes his mouth into a frown and he yanks at Roach’s reins, tugging her out of the stables.

“Don’t get lippy with me,” he tells her, the words spilling from his mouth, as uncontrollable as vomit. “There’s a gluemaker on the way out of town.”

_No. No. Don’t you fucking dare, don’t touch her, don’t—_

Roach, thank the gods, falls into line, still watching him warily. He exhales, sharp and relieved, as his body swings itself into the saddle and nudges her flanks, guiding her onto the road.

He gets lighter and lighter as they make their way to the edge of town, the curse peeling away from his skin. He takes one hand off the reins and wiggles his fingers, relief slipping into his throat as he watches them bend at his command.

He considers leaping from Roach’s back and running. He considers whirling her around and kicking her towards Cintra. He considers screaming for help.

He looks up.

The sour tang of glue is sharp in the air, accompanied by the wild fear of animals waiting to be slaughtered to make it. The gluemaker’s shop is just ahead on the road, sign swinging in the breeze. A horse whinnies, shrill and frantic.

_Don’t get lippy with me._

And that warning wasn’t directed at Roach at all, was it?

He swallows and lets Roach stay her course, lets her carry him in the direction that the curse had wanted him to go. Towards the next town, where there was rumored to be a pack of drowners. A soft feeling of _approval_ runs through him, and nausea bubbles in his stomach. He’s giving in. He’s doing what it wants, and it doesn’t even have to shock him or pull him or steal his memories.

He lets himself sag forward in the saddle, tangles his fingers in Roach’s mane. Doesn’t cry. _Can’t cry._

“Sorry, Roach,” he says, half-waiting for the curse to break him for daring to show affection. “Sorry.”

She nickers softly and keeps plodding out of town.

***

That’s enough to make him stop fighting for a few months, but it’s not in his nature to give up. It’s not in his nature to be controlled.

_(but it is, isn’t it?)_

And so he starts pulling at his limbs again, when he’s deep in the woods, where it wouldn’t be so easy to change horses. Trying to keep himself from riding towards civilization, towards places that have jobs for him to do. And he hates himself for gambling with Roach’s life like that, but she would understand, he thinks. She watches him sometimes, on the nights that his body isn’t his own, something in her eyes that he thinks might be sadness. She nudges at him with her nose, and the curse growls and bats her off. And she goes, and she grazes, but she always comes back for him.

He has an ally in this.

The curse always lets him go once it gets him back on a main road, once it’s shoved him insistently towards the next town. A few hours of control, at most. And it’s terrifying, every time it happens, be he can at least be glad that it’s short.

Until it’s not.

Until one day, when he’s deep in the woods, days away from any sort of civilization, heading to a nearby swamp to track down a kikimora nest. He lashes Roach to a tree and starts setting up camp, despite the fact that the sun is still high in the sky. Because he’s been riding for days, and he’s exhausted, and he just wants one day of rest.

The curse bites at his bones, races through his muscles, singing pain along every inch of him. It's not happy that he's decided to take a break. He grits his teeth and unrolls his bedroll, forcing himself to keep moving despite the agony under his skin. _Just keep moving, keep breathing, keep moving, keep breathing._

The pain washes away and the curse tugs at his limbs insistently, nudging him back towards Roach. He bites down on his lip and stops wrestling for his legs, instead pouring all of his focus into his right hand. If he can just move _one_ thing, maybe that’ll be enough to break its hold over him, at least a little.

He reaches for Roach.

And his thumb twitches.

He barely has a chance to feel triumph before the curse _howls_ inside him, turning his entire body into a bonfire. It hurts more than anything he’s felt in his life. He chokes on the air and his body sways forward, pitching him into Roach’s flank. He’s held in the inferno’s grasp for—minutes? Hours? He can’t tell and he can’t _breathe—_ and then it leaves him, leaves his mind empty and dazed and shocked.

Strings snap taut over his limbs, and his hands reach out and grab, pulling him up onto Roach, leaving his bedroll behind on the forest floor. The curse feels…it feels stronger than it ever has, and he doesn’t know _why._ Was it the weakness of his mind, the pain in his body? Or is it just being crueler, angrier? Could it have done this at any time? Had it just decided not to?

His feet kick Roach into a gallop and they ride.

Hours pass. The sun starts to dip towards the horizon and his hands guide Roach off the path, into a small clearing. His legs swing him from the saddle and maneuver him to a small hollow under a tree. The curse settles him down flat on his back and slams his eyes shut, and it’s just like that first night, after the banquet, when it had forced him to lie in silent stillness for hours and hours.

His heart slams against his ribcage and he tries desperately to stop his breathing from running away from him. _Sleep,_ he tells himself. _Sleep. You need to be strong if you want to fight this._

He doesn’t sleep, though his eyes stay shut through the long hours of the night, even when he wants to open them to take in the stars above him, the first rays of morning sun. He lies in the dirt like a corpse, and prays, stupidly, childishly, that this is just some horrible, drawn-out nightmare.

The next morning his eyes open.

And they’re still not his own. He’s not getting lighter, the curse is showing no signs of letting up, even as the day goes on and on, even as realizes he’s been under this spell for over twenty-four hours. His muscles are aching, and his head is screaming with exhaustion, but the curse doesn’t care. It had given it a chance to sleep, and he hadn’t. Why should it care if the world is going a migranish gray around him?

The day bleeds into evening and as his body draws Roach to a halt, panic rises hot and horrible in his throat. Because the curse is laying him down to sleep again, showing absolutely no interest in leaving him alone, and—and he doesn’t think he can fight it off, it’s so _fucking strong_.

_What if it never lets me go?_

_What if I’m trapped?_

_What if—?_

His eyes slip closed, and in spite of the panic choking him all over, sheer exhaustion wins out. He’s asleep within minutes.

He wakes up and he can’t move, every muscle is frozen, and his eyes are glued shut. He tries to scream, but his mouth won’t open. For one terrible moment, he forgets what’s happening to him. And then, in another terrible moment, he remembers.

He lies awake until the curse flicks his eyes open.

On the third day, he makes it to the swamp.

And he doesn’t get any lighter. His jaw sets and his hand reaches down to rest on the hilt of his sword. His legs stride forward and he wades into the muddy water. And oh gods, is this thing going to keep its hold on him while he fights a kikimora nest?

No—

No it can’t, it—

He can’t fight like this.

The water churns in front of him and his legs slam to a halt. His sword is out of its sheath, held loosely by his side as he waits, every muscle tense.

_I can’t, I can’t, I can’t._

A kikimora bursts from the water and the curse flies him forward.

_I can’t, I can’t, I can’t._

His sword slices through a leg and the monster roars, rearing up on its hind legs. Its pinchers flash in the air above him and he’s frozen completely still, neck craned up to watch as they descend.

_Move, move, fucking **move.**_

His body throws itself to the side at the last minute as the kikimora crashes down where he was just standing. His sword swings down and slices neatly through the neck, sending up a spatter of blood that burns like acid on his exposed skin. There’s a chittering chorus all around him. The rest of the nest has smelt blood in the water.

And there’s three of them.

_I can’t._

Five.

_I **can’t.**_

Seven.

He needs to retreat, this is too much, there are too many. He needs to retreat and regroup and come up with a better strategy, he’d need to do that even if he could control his own _fucking limbs._ And surely the curse must see that, surely it can’t intend to make him fight them all.

His hand falls to his side and digs into the pouch. Brings one, two, three potions up to his lips, knocking them back without a single care, ignoring the way they make his blood burn.

After that, he falls into his head a bit.

The world is a blur of blood and steel and sharp, slicing pain as he weaves among the kikimora, trading blow for blow. His limbs move without his conscious input, and the world is ringing louder and louder as the potions sharpen his senses. He feels almost drunk. Or almost dreaming.

And it’s pain in his shoulder and burning sun against his eyes. It’s insectoid screeches and singing silver and numbness. And he’s sure—as one kikimora shoves him beneath the muddy water, as another misses his throat by a hair, as he dances and fights and burns—he’s sure that he’s going to die here.

And then it’s over.

The kikimora lie dead around him, hacked to pieces. The strings give one last warning squeeze around his limbs and unravel. His hand twitches at his command.

And he’s light again.

He sinks to his knees in the middle of the muddy swamp, free for the first time in three days, shaking and overstimulated and bleeding from a dozen cuts. And this is what the curse wants him to be. Not just a witcher, but a witcher who fights even when the odds are hopeless. Who puts himself through hell to slay a monster, who grits bloody teeth and gets up, again and again. Who grinds himself to dust. Who gives every piece of himself to the world, and then some.

It wants him to be a sacrifice.

And he doesn’t cry at that realization, because he can’t. But the sound that tears itself from his throat sounds suspiciously close to a sob.


	4. Can you carry it with no regrets?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter: A couple of short moments of suicidal ideation.

Part of him wants to stop fighting, after the swamp. But he can’t. He can’t give in to this thing, he can’t spend the rest of his life carrying the curse inside his chest, a prisoner in his own body. Not when he’s been able to wrest back tiny bits of freedom even while it's controlling him. Twitching fingers and toes, mostly, but once, he was able to reach out his arm and grab a passing tree, trying desperately to pull himself off Roach’s back as she carried him towards an ice giant’s lair. He can chase this out of him, given enough time. Enough patience. Enough strength.

But _gods,_ the consequences for those moments of freedom are enough to make him wish he wasn’t so fucking stubborn.

Every time he’s able to twitch a muscle that it doesn’t want him to, it roars inside him, burning away every coherent thought he has until he’s left choking on air. And then it slams down over his limbs, heavier than before, a cloak of lead that he has no chance of shaking off. And stays there. For days.

And then for weeks.

And when the curse has him fully in its grip his world becomes—find contract, take contract, kill monster. Sleep when it starts getting dark, wake after the sun comes up. Don’t stop to rest. Don’t stop to pet your horse. Don’t wake up early for the simple pleasure of watching the sunrise. Don’t spend an hour sitting and looking out over a wide expanse of wilderness, just breathing in the world.

Don’t live.

Just walk and ride and kill.

The first time the curse lasts for longer than two weeks he wonders, dazed and half out of his mind, if he can call himself a person anymore. Because this thing has eaten away his autonomy and his words and his _life_ and—and if a sorcerer enchanted a pile of clay to do their bidding, you wouldn’t call it a human being. So how is he any different?

 _I have my mind,_ he reminds himself, as his body twirls and slices its way through three bruxae. _I have my mind._

_And someday I’ll have my freedom. And clay doesn’t get that._

_I’m a person._

_I’m real._

_I’m alive._

If he repeats it often enough, he can almost believe it.

***

Two years after Cintra, he meets Jaskier again. The curse has let him have command of his body for nearly a month, as long as he stayed on the Path and did what it wanted. He's been trying to steel himself to fight it again, to spend another awful few weeks without control when the fight ultimately fails. When he sees Jaskier walk through the door of the tavern that he’s crouched in, his breath catches in his throat.

The curse sparks warningly in his blood.

 _I’ll behave,_ he tells it, desperation in every inch of his brain. Because he can’t speak to Jaskier without his own words again, he _can’t. I won’t tell him I love him, I won’t tell him about you, just let me talk to him._

He doesn’t think _please._ Even now, even for this, he refuses to beg.

“Geralt!” Jaskier says upon seeing him. He looks delighted but wary. Like he’s bracing himself for a blow.

 _Another_ blow.

“I’m sorry,” Geralt says, keeping his voice as steady as possible. He wants to say this, at least, before the curse decides he’s being too emotional, too loving, too _human._ “For what I said to you. I was…tired and stressed and I took it out on you. And that wasn’t right.”

He’s practiced the words over and over, thinking of what he would say to Jaskier if he saw him again. Gradually whittling the words down, from a desperate love confession and plea for help, to a simple, straightforward apology that the curse can find no fault with.

He can only hope that Jaskier accepts it.

Jaskier smiles at him, soft and gentle, and takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“I missed you,” he says, and Geralt’s heart _soars._

He forces that dizzying love to stay off his face and when he speaks, his voice is as dry as a desert. He won’t give this thing an excuse to rip him away from this moment.

So he doesn’t say _I love you._

Or _stay with me._

Or even _I missed you too._

He just says: “There’s a nest of nekkers the next town over. Should be interesting.”

Jaskier grabs his lute and falls into step next to Geralt. And Geralt doesn’t know if he should feel triumphant, because he managed to convince the curse to not take him over, or defeated, because it didn’t need to.

Because he said exactly what it wanted him to.

And isn’t that still control?

***

The years blur together.

He fights harder and harder and the curse eats up more and more of his life, going from weeks of captivity at a time to months. And he knows he’s only making it worse by fighting but he can’t _stop._ He can’t stop, and he can’t give in, and soon he’s spending more time than not as a docile puppet.

He falls out of his head, sometimes. Lets the world wash into gray numbness and just ignores what his body is doing. He stays in that state for—days? Weeks? It’s easier than being aware, he thinks. Easier than watching his hands move with nausea curling in his stomach, easier than hearing the toneless calm of his own voice accepting yet another contract. But he can’t stay under forever. He needs to wake up to fight.

So he focuses on his breath, on keeping his lungs calm and steady. It’s the only part of himself that he still has control over, in the bad months, and he clings to that control like he’s hanging onto a cliff with broken fingers. It’s the only thing stopping him from slipping into the numbness forever.

He’s terrified that the curse will realize that someday, and snatch away his breath as easily as it had snatched away his voice.

The moments of freedom ring clear as a bell, jewel-bright dots against the background haze of the rest of his life. He watches the sunrise, and he pampers Roach, and he tries to be as good of a friend to Jaskier as he can. He brings him to every interesting corner of the Continent, rolling seas and flower-filled fields, and he tries not to think about building a life with him in a thousand beautiful places. Because the curse hates it when he even thinks about his love for Jaskier, and he wants to stay free when he’s with him.

Even the free moments are filled with monsters, of course. He can’t stop walking the Path if he wants to stay in control. But after he’s slain the kikimora, drowners, nekkers, _whatever,_ he can come back to camp and listen to Jaskier spin the muddy, bloody fight into a heroic ballad, he can lie loose-limbed and relaxed and watch the stars spin overhead. He can be human, if only for a moment.

***

Six years after Cintra, he’s wandering around Rinde, looking for a monster to fight, when he hears of a djinn in a river. A djinn that can grant any wish your heart desires. And for the first time in a long time, he feels something like hope.

The curse can’t even object to him fishing for it, is the beautiful thing. Because a djinn is a monster, and it wants him to hunt down monsters. Geralt feels a bit giddy with the thought that he’s found a loophole, a way to drive this away from him.

And then Jaskier is there.

And—

And he has the amphora, and he’s throwing away the wishes on petty things, stupid things, and there’s a weight squeezing Geralt’s throat tighter and tighter at the thought that his lifeline is slipping away.

And then they’re fighting and—

“You always say you want nothing from life! So how was I supposed to know you wanted three wishes _all to yourself!”_

And the frustration of having Jaskier standing there and shouting that he shouldn’t want anything when he’s been fighting for his life for the past _six years,_ and Jaskier _hadn’t fucking noticed—_

He slips up.

“I just want—”

_My freedom._

But he isn’t allowed to say that. The curse doesn’t take complete control, but it snatches his vocal cords, just for a moment.

“Some damn peace!”

***

Jaskier is dying.

Jaskier is dying.

Jaskier is dying.

The world is gray haze around him, despite the fact that he’s still free.

***

And then there’s a mage.

And she’s all deadly power and wide violet eyes and steadiness, sitting in front of a mass of writhing people. _Ah._ The guard asking for a fee, not to see the mayor, but to attend the mage’s magic sex club. He probably should have asked for more details before knocking him out. Whoops.

She eyes Geralt up like he’s something she wants. It sends a zing of discomfort down his spine, but Jaskier is _dying,_ so he offers himself up. Anything. _Anything._

She holds out her hand and he hands over the smashed remains of the amphora. And he sees the thin white lines on her wrists. There are stories of how Aretuza acquires its students. Unwanted girls sold by their families, girls who were too belligerent, too stubborn, too _ugly_ even, sometimes, because marriage is important and people are shallow. Unwanted girls, taken and molded into something new against their will, all options for the future stripped away until the only option they saw was allying themselves with the Brotherhood of Mages.

Geralt thinks he might understand her a little.

***

Jaskier is safe.

Jaskier is _safe._

He’s asleep and healing and he’ll be okay.

The haze clears away and Geralt can breathe again.

***

“Tell me,” Yennefer says as she climbs into the bath, her voice smooth as a river rock. “Are all witchers similarly blessed?”

_Are they?_

It’s a question that’s tormented him for years. He thinks of his brothers, out on the path, killing monsters and never straying. Are they all like him? Do they carry this curse in their bones, hurting them and pulling them and not even letting them talk about it to other witchers? Is Lambert like him? Eskel? _Vesemir?_

Even if he escapes this, what will happen to them?

It’s a question that eats at him whenever he runs into another witcher, whenever he looks into another pair of golden eyes and wonders their owner is screaming behind them. If they’re looking at him and wondering the same thing.

Are they just a species of hopeless, empty puppets?

And the most terrifying question of all, the one he doesn’t really want an answer to—

If they are, and if no witcher has ever escaped, what hope does he have?

“Hardly call us blessed,” he says. The curse hisses in warning.

“Oh don’t be so grim. You were created by magic. Our magic.”

_Was “your magic” the thing that broke my mind?_

He swallows down his anger and turns it into humor instead.

“Thank you. Made for a magical childhood.”

And then it’s back and forth, trading barbs and bits of hurt, opening up little by little. And bit by bit, he thinks he might want to know Yennefer of Vengerberg.

***

And then—

She’s stepping over to him while she rubs her perfume on her wrists. A presence flutters against his mind and _gods, gods,_ this is his chance, this is—

 _Help,_ he thinks. _Help, please, I’m trapped in my mind, I don’t—_

“Tough to get in your head,” Yennefer says with a small, self-satisfied smile. Her voice curls up at the ends like she’s basking in his defeat.

_Please, please, please, I know you want to use me for your plan, but I’ll give you the djinn, I’ll give you anything you want, just help me._

“You have a strong will,” she says, and she’s _not listening,_ she’s not _trying_ to read his mind, she’s just trying to control it. Her spell bears down over his mind, smothering it in layers of the lilac and gooseberry potion, crushing him and his curse both.

 ** _PLEASE_** he howls, trying to reach out and grasp at her mind, but she shakes him off like he’s an irritating fly.

“You don’t get to look at my head, little witcher,” she says, and her scent gets stronger as she steps over to him. “Just like I’m not looking at yours. Privacy and all that.”

 _Please,_ he sobs, and she can’t hear him, she can’t help him. _Please._

“Sleep now,” she whispers, and leans up to kiss him.

***

The guard is beating him. Punching him again and again, kneeing him in the face, tugging him around the cell by the cuffs that bite painfully into his wrists.

He doesn’t care.

He tried to save himself with a djinn and he tried to save himself with a mind-reader and he tried to save himself, over and over again, by fighting the curse directly. And none of it had worked. He was just broken more and more.

Maybe it’s a good thing he’s going to die here.

He stares at the bars of the cell as the guard steps behind him, and Chireadan makes a soft noise of protest. _Just end it,_ he thinks. _Just end it. Set me free, let me go._

The curse snarls in his blood but there’s nothing it can do. It can’t make him fight, chained and helpless on the floor. It can’t make him carry it anymore.

He’s going to be free.

“Last words witcher. Make them good.”

_Thank you for letting me go._

But his mouth forms other words. Even before death, it can’t let him admit that he’s a prisoner.

“I want you to _burst,_ you son of a whore.”

***

So. He’s the one with the wishes.

He’s the one with the wishes and he’s wasted two of them already and there’s no way the curse will let him use the third one to escape.

He’s the one with the wishes, and the curse had made him try to murder Jaskier.

He’s going to be sick.

***

He runs into the house because Yennefer saved Jaskier’s life after Geralt had nearly killed him. Because she’s desperate, and angry, and is responding to her own imprisonment, her own stolen autonomy, by trying to take the entire world for her own.

And he understands that. He wishes he could do the same, almost. He wishes he could rage, and scream, and make himself into something powerful.

The djinn snarls at him from Yennefer’s mouth. _“You could choose not to be a witcher!”_

And gods. _Gods._ Every part of him aches to try. But the curse is humming in his throat, just waiting to snatch up his vocal cords if he attempts to wish it away. And he doesn’t want it picking his last wish, not when it used the first two to kill.

So what does he want then, if he can’t have his freedom?

He looks at Yennefer, screaming as her body is ripped apart by a being she can’t hope to contain. He thinks of Jaskier, choking on his own blood, still and silent in Yennefer’s bed.

“I wish for Yennefer and Jaskier to stay safe.”

Simple. Easy. _Keep these two safe. Even if this curse makes me into a monster, even if this curse makes me try to hurt them, keep these two safe._

The howling wind stops. Yennefer grabs at her abdomen, scrabbling for the amphora as the paint dissolves into chips of dust. The curse relaxes in his blood, satisfied that he can no longer rid himself of it. For a moment, all is calm.

And then the roof caves in. For a second, he thinks he’ll die, crushed beneath a mountain of fallen wood. He closes his eyes and waits for it.

Instead, he feels Yennefer’s hand on his back, shoving him forward and through a portal. His stomach is in his throat and his throat is in his stomach and the world wavers like glass around him.

And then they’re back in her orgy room.

Which. Hmm.

He thinks she might be trying to tell him something.

They’re arguing and sniping and—

“Djinn are only dark creatures when they’re held captive,” he says, filling his voice with calm confidence.

“How can you be so sure?”

He looks at her, _really looks_ at her. Looks at her anger and her righteousness and her snarling desperation to take her life back.

“When did you last feel happy when you felt trapped?”

The curse snarls, sending a jolt of pain spasming down his arms. He ignores it. They barely even register anymore, these little shocks of warning.

Yennefer looks back, and there’s something like pain in her eyes. She doesn’t want to unpack that, doesn’t want to acknowledge how trapped she feels.

“If you were going to open a portal, you could have taken us out of this shit town!” he growls, sitting back on his heels and steering the conversation back into safer waters. Gratitude flashes in her eyes before she groans and takes the bait, falling into the same easy back-and-forth banter as they had in the bath.

He thinks she could become important to him, Yennefer, with her violet eyes and righteous anger and fearlessness. And perhaps she thinks the same of him, and perhaps that’s what leads her to lean forward, kiss him, shove him to the ground.

Or perhaps she just wants a good lay.

He can certainly use one, if only to distract his mind from the fact that freedom was _so close,_ just _inches_ away, if he could only force his _fucking mouth to say the right godsdamned—_

Push it down. Push it away. Focus on the feeling of Yennefer’s body, her lips, her hair.

Breathe and fuck and live.

They lie side by side afterward, in the half-ruined room of the half-ruined house. And now that it’s all over, now that he’s finally still, the anger crawls back up his throat in a hot, wet wave.

He was so close. So close. So close he could almost feel the strings unraveling themselves from his limbs. Like a prisoner hanging out of the bars of his jail to catch some sunlight on his skin.

He had felt the sun, if only for a moment. And now all he can see is another six years, ten years, a hundred years of his hazy gray half-life.

It isn’t _fair._

Yennefer sighs, satisfied and warm and maybe—

He had been able to wrench control of fingers and limbs for a few seconds at a time. And he had never tried to do the same with his voice, but maybe—

Just maybe _._

He only needs a second. Just long enough to tell her to read his mind.

He swallows and steels all his resolve. A blistering shock of pain ripples through him, strings tighten around his throat, but he focuses every piece of himself on speaking against them.

It’s harder than moving an arm, a battle just to get his mouth to open, much less to form his lips into words. This is the _last_ thing the curse wants him to do, and it fights him every step of the way, turning his body into a lightning bolt mid-strike.

But he speaks.

“Can you—?”

And something _snaps._

The curse roars through his blood, shrieking and wailing like a furious monster. It snatches at him with long hooked claws and this—this feels _different,_ this feels— It always hurt when it forced him into a long period of control, shutting his mind down with pain so that it could tug ropes over his skin and bind him up tight. But it still always felt like—like an outside entity, even though it lived within him. Like an angry spirit, nudging at his legs to get him to walk, shoving a sword into his hands, clapping a hand over his mouth when he said something it didn’t like.

But now it drives long threads into his muscles, weaves ropes around his very bones, digs into his throat and ties his vocal chords still. It runs wildly through his body, faster than he can hope to contain, turning every nerve into another bar of his cage. It’s changing him, from the inside out.

He tries to fight but it’s like trying to punch a hurricane. He can’t hope to stand up against it. He realizes, with a cold swoop of dread, that it had been _letting_ him have his small scraps of freedom. He hadn’t been fighting the curse away, hadn’t been clawing back his body inch by inch. He’d just been a fish struggling in a net, getting more and more tangled the more he squirmed.

And it had warned him, making him into a puppet for days then weeks then months. It had warned him to stop fighting, it had warned him that the consequences could get worse and worse and worse.

And he hadn’t listened.

He tries to scream, tries to stand, tries to finish his half-asked question. But his tongue lies heavy in his mouth and his back is rooted to the ground as the curse works at him, turning his body into a prison piece by piece. And it’s been a prison, it’s _always been_ a prison, but this—this feels permanent. A fortress in the middle of a stormy sea, dark and cold, with bars made out of star metal. No escape. No reprieve.

For a moment, he thinks—he _hopes—_ the curse is going to crush him out of existence. Turn him into an empty shell and kill his mind. Get rid of Geralt and leave only the White Wolf.

But it doesn’t. He has to endure this. It _wants him_ to endure this. This is—this is his punishment for trying to speak.

It binds up his limbs and his voice and then—

And then—

He tries to take a deep, soothing breath, tries to calm himself down, tries to draw strength from the one bit of freedom he has.

But his lungs are moving steady and unbroken in their rhythm and he can’t—

He can’t control—

He can’t control his _lungs_ , oh gods, _oh gods._

“Can I what?” Yennefer asks, turning over on her side to look at him, her eyes shining with what he thinks might be happiness.

“Never mind,” his voice says. “It’s not important.”

_Help me, help me, gods Yennefer, read my mind, read my mind, **please—**_

“What did you wish for?” she asks, reaching out and trailing her hand against his cheek—only it’s not his cheek, is it? Not anymore. He doesn’t belong to himself anymore.

The shell of Geralt of Rivia closes its eyes.

And Geralt lets himself fall back into numbness.


	5. can you stand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! Hope you're all doing great and feeling emotionally stable :)
> 
> CWs for this chapter: suicidal ideation, dubcon (Geralt has sex while under the curse's influence, and he wants to have sex but is still really uncomfortable that he's not in control of his own body. If you don't wanna read that, skip the section that starts with "He meets Yennefer again, in a tiny village on the outskirts of Lyria..."), some discussions of low body weight

He lets himself stay naïve for a while. Lets himself believe that maybe this won’t last forever, that maybe it’ll fall away from him after a few days, weeks, months. Lets himself hope that this is just a temporary punishment, a worse one than normal, but one that will nevertheless fade.

Despite the fact that he can’t even try to wiggle a finger.

Despite the fact that he can’t control his own lungs. _And what if this thing decides he’s not worth keeping alive, what if it just makes him stop breathing, what if—_

Despite the fact that he feels not just held back from his body but locked away from it, cast out of it, feeling its pain and its exhaustion but not actually a part of it.

Despite all of that, he lets himself think that the strings might someday unwind from his nerves and limbs and lungs. Because the alternative—

_This is forever, this is forever, you know this is forever. You’re a prisoner and a slave and you’ll never again breathe on your own. You’ll never see another sunrise, you’ll never pet Roach, you’ll never speak a word of your own thoughts._

—the alternative is too much to shoulder.

It’ll let him go someday.

Even if only for a few days at a time, it—

It _has_ to.

But it doesn’t.

Days go by, weeks go by, _months_ go by and his lungs still drag on like a metronome, his eyes still snap dutifully shut when it’s time to sleep, his lips stay closed and still unless speech is absolutely necessary. _He_ stays closed and still unless it’s absolutely necessary.

He realizes, one night as he’s lying flat on the forest floor, that he hasn’t heard his own voice in weeks. That he’s forgotten what it feels like in his throat.

He’s forgotten what a lot of things feel like. Freedom. Warmth. Comfort.

The curse keeps him operating at maximum efficiency. Petty, _human_ needs are tossed to the side—no point in spending extra coin on warm food, or new clothes, or a warm bath. Raw deer meat does just as well. Stitching up the same rough-cloth shirt a dozen times does just as well. A freezing river does just as well.

That way it can spend all his money on armor, swords, herbs for his potions. It can strip away every bit of humanity and leave him as only a witcher, a hunter, a _creature_ more than anything else.

Witchers don’t need feelings. They don’t need laughter, or sunrises, or soft blankets, or other people.

They don’t need long hair, either.

The curse realizes that—he thinks it’s been seven months after the djinn? Time is getting fuzzier and fuzzier these days. He’s living in that gray haze half the time. It’s easier than constantly, pointlessly panicking.

But seven months in, he thinks, it’s one of those hazy days, and he’s fighting five ghouls, falling away from the feeling of his arms swinging his sword through half-rotten flesh. He vaguely registers a sharp prickle of pain in his scalp as one of the ghouls snatches up a hunk of his hair and yanks, slowing him down, just for a second. His face snarls, and his elbow slams into the ghoul’s face, knocking it free. The curse flies him through the rest of the fight easily, sword flashing, fingers flexing and spilling fire across the screeching monsters, feet spinning through the disgusting swamp, leaving his lower body covered with mud. But that one second slowdown is all it takes for the curse to decide that his hair is a liability.

When the ghouls lie dead, and his hands have neatly severed their heads to bring back as proof, he trudges back to his camp. He tosses the heads off to the side, slings off his swords and pulls off his clothes, and wades into the chilly waters of the nearby river. The cold is a shock to his system, an unwelcome reminder that he’s living in this body. It drags him out of the warm gray haze and he’s left staring down at his hands as they scrub the mud from his legs.

_Go back. Fall back down. You don’t want to be aware._

But the cold is too much, too grounding, and he stays awake even as his body finishes with its impromptu bath and sloshes back out of the river. It wraps a threadbare blanket around him—he isn’t allowed comfort, but it doesn’t want him to get hypothermia, either.

His hands gather an armful of twigs and a few larger branches and arrange them in the cold firepit in the middle of his campsite. Roach huffs at him when he passes her, sticking her nose forward like she’s expecting him to pet her, but the curse ignores her as usual.

A quick flash of Igni and the fire is lit. The curse folds him down next to it, and his arms reach for his discarded gear, picking out a small, sharp dagger.

_What?_

What is there to cut? He doesn’t have any meat or cord or—

His other hand reaches up for his head, gathering his hair into a low ponytail.

_No._

_No no no no no,_ he doesn’t want—

But of course, what he wants doesn’t fucking matter.

The dagger comes up, and hacks away, uncaring and sloppy. Because the curse doesn’t care how he looks, it doesn’t care that he _loves_ his hair, that it’s the one part of his appearance that he takes pride in. He doesn’t need pride or individuality. Because only people care about things like that, and he isn’t a person.

Long white locks flutter to the ground and the air blows cold and sharp against the back of Geralt’s neck. He wants to scream.

Instead, his hands gather the fallen hair and throw it into the fire. It curls and blackens, sending acrid smoke up into the air and filling the clearing with the smell of burning things. Roach whinnies at him, spooked by the scent, but he doesn’t try to comfort her. He just grabs a spare set of clothes from his bags and pulls them over his still-damp skin. The sun is setting. It’s time to sleep.

When he lies down, the shorn-off bits of hair poke into his back and neck, a sharp and itchy reminder of what he’s lost. But despite the discomfort, the curse doesn’t sit him up to wipe the hairs away, or even turn him onto his side. It just closes his eyes, same as always.

***

He holds on hope that the punishment is temporary for the first year.

But then it’s summer again. It’s summer again, and it’s been a _whole fucking year_ since the djinn, and the curse hasn’t even twitched, hasn’t even given back the simple freedom of breathing. And it’s ripped through Geralt and turned him into the person it wants him to be, efficient and cold, used to the taste of raw meat, to the feeling of fighting with half-healed wounds, to the emptiness around his neck and shoulders.

He isn’t Geralt anymore, is he? He’s just…a witcher. Nameless and wordless, interchangeable with a dozen other men. The curse doesn’t _need_ Geralt. It doesn’t need to let him out, it doesn’t need to give him the reigns of his own body, even for an instant.

He only has one bit of hope left, since the curse seems intent on keeping him like this, molding him and bending him to its will. And that’s that Jaskier will see him one of these days and recognize that there’s something _wrong_ with him.

***

Two years…he thinks? It’s summer, and—he last had his freedom in summer so…so that adds up, doesn’t it? It must. Two years after the djinn, he finally sees Jaskier again, when he goes to a tavern to pick up a contract.

“Geralt!” comes his ever-cheerful voice, followed by a hand on his back. His blood sings at the contact, gods, no one has touched him with anything approximating kindness in _so fucking long._

“Bard,” his voice replies, low and growly. Jaskier isn’t dissuaded by his demeanor, pressing in closer and leaning over the bar to order Geralt an ale. Another luxury he hasn’t been allowed in quite some time, but his excitement at getting a drink pales in comparison to the way his heart flutters when Jaskier sways into his side. He slings an arm over Geralt’s shoulder, and his skin prickles with warmth, coming alive beneath Jaskier’s touch. Not for the first time, he wonders if Jaskier has a little bit of chaos in him.

“It is good to see you again,” Jaskier grins, steering Geralt over to a small table in the corner. “Though I must admit, you are looking a bit rough.”

_Yeah, because I’m not myself—_

“Ghoul tore out half my hair. Had to cut the rest myself.”

“Well you could use a clean-up job,” Jaskier clucks, running his fingers through Geralt’s hair. “The ends are all frayed, did you cut this with a _knife?”_

“Was all I had.”

“Oh dearest. You poor thing.”

_You have no idea._

“I’ll take care of you,” Jaskier promises. “But it’s not just your hair, it’s—Geralt have you been eating enough?”

“Yeah.”

_No._

“You sure?” Jaskier’s finger pokes at his cheekbone.

“I’m _sure,”_ he growls, shrugging Jaskier off. Geralt aches at the loss of contact. _Come back. Please come back._

“Even so,” Jaskier murmurs, and worry pinches his brow. “I’m gonna order you some stew, does that sound good?”

_Cooked food, gods, yes, that sounded amazing._

“I don’t need your help.”

“Then lucky for you, I enjoy giving it,” Jaskier says flippantly. He waves a waitress over and asks for a large bowl of stew, some crusty bread, cheese. She dishes it up quickly and Geralt’s mouth waters at the smell.

He’s half-terrified the curse is going to insist on the ‘not needing help’ thing, that it’ll push the bowl away, or pour it over Jaskier’s head, or throw the cheese on the ground. But it doesn’t want to waste food served up to him on a platter, not when this is so much more efficient than hunting.

So it brings spoonfuls of the stew to his mouth, and if Geralt could cry, he would at the taste. It’s _so good._ Fuck, he’d forgotten how delicious food could be.

Jaskier plies him with questions about the past two years, and the curse keeps his responses short, often monosyllabic. But Jaskier doesn’t get annoyed, doesn’t leave him, doesn’t push him away. He just presses into Geralt’s side, a warm and constant weight, and orders them more ale, more stew, as he regales Geralt with his adventures at various royal courts.

The gray haze fades away, and for just a moment, Geralt can pretend that this is his life. That he is allowed to be happy, and warm, and sharing a meal with the man that he loves. That every night after will be like this.

Jaskier brings him upstairs with a promise of a warm bed and surprisingly, the curse accepts. Just like food is food, sleep is sleep, and if he’s not wasting his coin, a bed is apparently better than the woods. Less effort than setting up a campsite, at least.

There’s a hot bath waiting, and Jaskier coaxes him into it.

“It’ll be easier to cut your hair if it’s wet,” he says. “And you’ve got a solid coating of grime on your face. Come on, Geralt…”

“Fine,” he mutters, and he could write pages and pages of poetry about the feeling of warm water over his aching muscles. He can’t relax into it, his body staying as tense and on-guard as always, but something loosens in his chest. He’s _safe._ He’s safe and comfortable and Jaskier is behind him, pouring warm water over his head.

“I wish you’d take care of yourself,” Jaskier murmurs, rubbing some of his chamomile and lavender oil into Geralt’s hair. The smell surrounds him, floral and delicate, and he feels, if only for a moment, like something worthy of kindness.

“No time. Don’t need it.”

“But you do, darling.” His fingers dig down into Geralt’s scalp, rubbing in wide circles as his thumbs find the base of Geralt’s skull, the back of his neck. And he can’t remember the last time he was touched like this—he doesn’t think he’s _ever_ been touched like this.

“You can’t fight monsters if you’re sick,” Jaskier says, continuing the circles. “Or weak with hunger. You know that, right?”

But he _can._ He _has to._ The curse pushes him on and on, even when a cough rattles in his chest, even when the sun burns his too-pale skin, even when his eyes ache with exhaustion.

“Mmph. I’m a witcher. Can do a lot of things you can’t.”

Jaskier inhales, shuddering and wet. His hands pause on Geralt’s head.

“I know,” he says, and he sounds like he’s in pain. Geralt wants nothing more than to twist around in the tub and grab his cheek, stroke his hair, ask him what’s wrong.

But his eyes stay firmly fixed on the door.

Jaskier’s hands disappear entirely, quickly replaced by a wash of warm water.

“Alright,” he says, forcing some of the cheeriness back into his voice. Something cold and heavy slithers down Geralt’s throat, lodging near his vocal cords. He doesn’t want Jaskier to _feel_ like this, he doesn’t want to hurt him with his distance. “Let’s get the scissors, shall we? I cut at least five men’s hair at Oxenfurt, so I must be pretty good at it, wouldn’t you say.”

“Mmm.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

There’s a soft _shink_ of the scissors near his ear as Jaskier gets to work. They sit in silence for a few minutes, Jaskier focusing on Geralt’s hair. But of course, he can’t stay quiet for long.

“Let’s journey together,” he says. “Just for a bit. It’s been a while, and I—I’ve missed you.”

_I’ve missed you too. Gods, I miss you now._

“You shouldn’t,” he says instead.

“Why not?”

“Path is no place for a human. You missing me, you coming with me, it’s only bound to get one of us killed.”

It’s more than he’s said in a year and he’d give anything to tear out his own vocal cords so that he’ll _stop talking._ Because it’s going to say something to hurt Jaskier, he knows it will.

“I’m not dead yet,” Jaskier says. His hand smooths over the crown of Geralt’s head, smoothing down a chunk of hair. “And we’ve been through quite a bit together, you and I. That must count for something, right?”

The curse hesitates.

Which is surprising. He expects it to snarl in Jaskier’s face, to spit some cutting remark about how useless a bard was to a witcher, how Jaskier had nearly gotten killed on every one of their ‘adventures,’ how Jaskier never knew when to shut up. Any number of things to drive him away.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he says instead. “I don’t want to worry about you, I—isn’t this enough?”

And it’s—genuine-sounding, and emotional, and it has Jaskier choking back something that sounds like a sob.

It’s something he would say.

…that’s it, isn’t it?

The curse is scared of Jaskier realizing that it’s there. So it’s making Geralt speak like himself.

_Fuck._

Fuck he’d hoped that—he’d hoped that Jaskier would be able to figure it out. He’d hoped that it would make him say something just a little bit too distant, a little bit too unbelievable, a little bit too _not him,_ and that Jaskier would think of all the monsters and spells and cruelties of the world and realize that something was wrong.

But the curse is one step ahead of him, isn’t it? No matter what he does, no matter what he tries, it always finds a way to outmaneuver him. And why wouldn’t it? It’s built to keep him trapped, it’s built to curl in his bones and lock away his voice and push away everyone who tries to help him without giving the slightest hint that anything is wrong. It’s _always fucking one step ahead of me and I can’t escape it and **I can’t get out, fucking HELL LET ME OUT.**_

His breath stays calm.

Jaskier smooths his hand over Geralt’s head one last time— ** _I’M IN HERE, I’M STUCK HERE, THAT ISN’T ME, YOU’RE NOT TOUCHING ME, YOU’RE NOT TALKING TO ME LET ME OUT LET ME OUT GODSPLEASEJASKIERHELPMEHELPMEHELPME_**

“Of course this is enough,” Jaskier whispers. “Of course it is—I’m not following you for your adventures, Geralt, I just—I just want to keep you safe.”

**_THEN HELP ME_ **

“That’s my job,” his voice says, unwavering and smooth and _itisn’tmeitisn’tmeitisn’titisn’t._

“I know it is. But that doesn’t mean you can’t accept help.”

He pulls away from Geralt’s head with a huff.

“For instance, your hair looks _significantly_ better now that it’s felt just a touch of Jaskier’s magic. Wanna see it?”

“Hmm.”

“That’s what I thought.”

There’s a faint clattering over near Jaskier’s bags and then he circles the bath, kneeling down in front of Geralt. His eyes are rimmed with red— _I’m sorry, I didn’t want to upset you, I **DIDN’T this ISN’T ME, PLEASE—**_ but he offers the mirror to Geralt with a watery smile.

“Take a look,” he says, and the face staring out of the glass is—

Geralt hasn’t seen himself for two years.

And he’s still not seeing himself.

The face staring back at him is pale and gaunt. The hollows of its cheeks are so deep that it looks more like a skull that a living person. The only spots of color on it are its flat golden eyes and the patch of bright red sunburn stretching across its nose and cheeks. Dark circles ring the bottom of its eyes, and the short white hair feathered around its ears only accents how fucking _thin_ it is.

This is what the curse has turned him into.

Skinny and tired and colorless.

“Looks good,” he says, handing the mirror back.

“You’re welcome,” Jaskier says. “Now. I’m gonna go play some more songs and _you_ should get some sleep. You need it.”

The curse dutifully hoists him out of the bath and dresses him in his smallclothes as Jaskier gathers up his lute.

“See you in a bit,” Jaskier murmurs, smiling at him softly, before he turns around and walks away.

His legs hoist him into bed—it’s so _soft,_ at least that’s _something—_ and his arms yank the fluffy covers over him. And he’s warm and comfortable. But the feeling of safety has long since fled. Because Jaskier isn’t going to help him. Doesn’t know that he _needs help_ and—and if Jaskier can’t help him, then who the fuck _can?_ The only other people who know him, who really know him, are the other witchers. And they’re probably suffering too, they’re—fucking hell, Vesemir is three hundred years old. How many of those years has he spent screaming in his own head?

And Geralt promised himself that he wouldn’t beg. He promised himself that he wouldn’t stop fighting. But he _couldn’t_ fight it. He couldn’t wish it away. He couldn’t ask someone else to save him. So—

 _Please,_ he begs. _Please just let me go. Just for a little bit. I’ll stop fighting you, I’ll stay on the Path, I’ll be the weapon you wanted, please just let me go. I can’t **live like this anymore.**_

His eyes snap shut. His muscles freeze. The curse doesn’t care if he can’t live like this because it can force him to. It doesn’t have to negotiate—it doesn’t _want_ to negotiate. It has no pity for him. He already had enough chances to stop fighting, but he’d kept at it, snarling and spitting and raging at his confines. And now he’s paying the price for his arrogance.

He’s never getting out of this. He’s never getting control of his body back. He’ll stay trapped in his head for—for years, decades, _centuries_ even. Until he dies.

He’s trapped.

He’s trapped and alone and there’s no hope of rescue.

The begging fades away, drowned out by the rising ring of panic. He can’t hold words in his mind right now, can barely hold a coherent thought. He’s trapped, he’s trapped, he’s a _caged fucking animal,_ he’s trapped forever and he can’t—he can’t—he can’t _do this._

In the privacy of his own head, Geralt screams, long and loud and desperate.

His breath stays as steady as the changing tides.

The gray haze crawls back over his mind.

***

In the morning he wakes on his back. Jaskier is curled around him like a suit of armor, breathing hot air onto his neck. The curse doesn’t let him drink in the morning sun, the warmth of his friend. It picks him up and gathers his things and leaves Jaskier to wake up alone.

***

Another year passes.

***

He meets Yennefer again, in a tiny village on the outskirts of Lyria. She grins at the sight of him and it’s nice to feel wanted. She tugs him into her bedroom and it’s nice to want someone.

The curse lets him fall into bed with her. Of course it does. Wouldn’t do to make a mind-reader suspicious. 

There is a simple joy in this pleasure, in teasing happy noises out of Yennefer’s throat, in lying next to her afterwards and feeling her trace the scars on her back. To listen to her talk of her childhood, of her dreams, of her failed attempt at court life.

To know her a bit better.

But there is also a terror in it, a sickening dread as he watches himself thrust into her with no control of his own movements. He wants this, he does, but if he didn’t—if _she_ didn’t—he would have no way of stopping himself. And the curse treats sex like it treats everything else. Simple. Perfunctory. Transactional, almost.

He wants to go slower, to spend hours exploring her body, wringing those sounds out of her until he found the motions that made her scream. But he isn’t allowed.

She smiles at him in the morning, dozy and satisfied, and tells him that she hopes their paths will cross again.

He hopes so too.

***

Another year.

***

He spends almost every hour of his life wrapped up in that gray haze. His only sense of time is how cold he is when he bathes, when he sleeps.

He doesn’t remember what it feels like to not be in pain. Half-healed wounds pull constantly at his limbs, his back, his throat. He’s sore, all the time and everywhere, his whole body aching like a bruise from fights, from sleeping on the ground, from what he’s pretty sure is a constant low-level fever.

He’s sick and exhausted and his body is breaking down.

He thinks he might be dying, slowly but steadily. He doesn’t think he minds that, much. It might even be a blessing.

***

Another.

***

There are some moments that the haze lifts. The moments that Jaskier finds him, clucks over his wounds, buys him food and a bath and a roof over his head. The moments that Yennefer finds him, cleans him and clothes him and then quickly unclothes him. When he’s with them, he can feel like a human being, if only for a night. Even though it’s been two, three, four, _five fucking years_ since his freedom was taken from him.

A century, really, if you think about it.

And every single time they leave, every single time he’s on his own again, grayed out and tired and _dying, dying, dying,_ it hurts just a little bit more.

***

Another.

***

He loves Jaskier.

He thinks he might love Yennefer too, a little bit.

But even still, there’s only so much he can take. Only so many times he can go from being a human to being an object.

So he makes himself stay hazy, even when he’s with them. Doesn’t let himself feel the warmth of the bathwater, the heat of Yennefer’s kisses, the long-dead hope that either of them will be able to help him.

Doesn’t feel anything at all.

Divorces himself from his surroundings as much as he can and lets himself drift through his mind. He’ll die sooner or later. To a kikimora, a griffin, a mob of humans, a fucking _fever_ at this rate.

He’ll die.

And it’ll be okay then.

_He’ll be okay then._

***

He hears Jaskier. That’s nice.

He hears Yennefer too. That…doesn’t seem right?

They haven’t been together since the djinn. Is Jaskier dying?

He claws up through the haze, forcing his brain to process the world around him. Jaskier on his left, Yennefer on his right. A bunch of dwarves? A knight? Two women. A man that smells like brimstone.

And, before them, a mountain looms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Ah, I will write a quick three-paragraph timeskip to get us to the mountain  
> That "quick three-paragraph timeskip": Becomes an entire chapter  
> Me: Ah.


	6. the person you've become

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! I was participating in a lot of fandom events this past month—namely Geralt Whump Week and the Geraskier Midsummer Minibang! So I have quite a few new witcher fics up (most of them completed one/two shots) if you wanna go check those out :D
> 
> CW for this chapter: A few instances of suicidal ideation from Geralt, lots and lots of dissociation

It takes him a while to figure out what they’re doing on the mountain, exactly. He wasn’t exactly awake when they discussed it. He’s barely awake now, the gray nothingness clawing at his mind as his legs follow the others up the path. _You’re still trapped. There’s no point in awareness. Go back to sleep._

But there is a point in awareness, he reminds his frazzled brain, because whatever this is, it’s big enough that Yen and Jask are both here, and he needs to protect them, he—

_You can’t protect them._

_You can’t protect anything you actually care about._

_Sleep._

_It’ll hurt less._

Because it does hurt. It hurts to hear Jaskier chattering away in his ear, like nothing at all is wrong. It hurts to see Yennefer, carefully keeping her distance from him. It hurts to see all these strange new people with their strange new stories, and be unable to ask about them—to be unable to even ask why he’s here, what they’re doing.

But _he_ also hurts. Physically. And he’s no stranger to pain. It hurt, when he was awake last. It’s hurt for the past six years. The ache of cold, of hunger, of old and new wounds alike.

But this feels—

It’s sharp and aching all at once, a throbbing pain that sears through him from head to toe, pulsing in time with his steps. But it seems to be centered around his left calf, which screams whenever he puts weight on it. It feels as though he’d thrust his leg into a fire, and held it there to burn until there was nothing left but ash.

And he can smell, beneath the wildflowers thick around them, the sharp tang of rot. Coming from him.

Something is very, _very_ wrong. He’s injured himself, badly enough that his whole body feels like fire and smells like rotten meat, and the curse hasn’t been allowing him to care for it properly, visit a mage, draw the infection out.

He thinks—

He thinks this might be the thing to kill him.

Beneath the agony clogging every nerve, the only thing he can feel at that thought is relief.

His feet trudge up and up and up. Yennefer is fawning over the knight. Why? He thought that they—had he done something, when he was down in the gray? Had the curse torn them apart, without him even realizing it?

_It doesn’t matter._

_Whatever you had was only a farce anyway._

_She doesn’t love you. She doesn’t even know who you are._

Still, she keeps looking at him, over her shoulder, whenever her knight does something particularly ridiculous. Her eyes flashing, like she’s daring him to say something. His mouth stays shut. His feet keep moving. His body burns. His mind drifts.­

Jaskier runs off into the bushes to get some berries—allegedly for Téa and Véa, though Geralt suspects he’s just hungry. Or, potentially, he wants to get Geralt to eat them instead. Take more than he could hope to eat, then proclaim he’s full, shoving the remainder into Geralt’s hands. He does that still, Geralt thinks. Unless they’ve also shifted when Geralt was…away. He’s always done that. Trying to take care of him in the guise of something else.

Jaskier yelps, and Geralt’s body moves before he even registers that it’s a cry for help. His mind feels sluggish, trying to hold thoughts in it again, like he can’t quite chain together cause and effect. Like he’s living in a dream. But his body knows what to do, even though every muscle screams when he steps forward, putting himself between Jaskier and whatever scared him.

A hirikka. Rare. Endangered. _Hungry._ Not a threat. The curse parses this at the same time he does, and it lowers his arm, turning him around to face the party.

“Sheath your weapons,” it says, just as the knight charges past Geralt. He wants to run after him, grab his arm and yank him away from the defenseless thing, but the curse keeps his feet rooted to the ground. The hirikka isn’t a threat, but it’s not worth defending, either. It’s not an intelligent monster after all, not a dragon, not a cursed girl that might someday breathe free. Not under his purview to protect.

The curse doesn’t even let him turn away as the knight chops off its arm and head, as he slices deep into its torso. Butchering it, though _he’d_ never be called a butcher.

The curse blinks. It breathes. It watches as Yen fawns over—Sir Eyck, that’s his name, evidently. It doesn’t protest the murder of the hirikka.

Yen frowns at Geralt as she walks by, arm and arm with the blood-spattered knight. There’s a question in her eyes, a concern that he doesn’t have enough strength or hope to look into.

“That dragon won’t stand a chance,” laughs one of the dwarves.

_Oh._

So that’s why they’re here. Following a mob up a mountain to protect a dragon’s nest. A little known duty of the wolf school, guarding beasts like this, but one that was apparently woven into the curse alongside every other one of their morals.

_Go to sleep. You’ve figured it out. Yen and Jask are fine. It **hurts. GO TO SLEEP.**_

Jaskier tugs him towards a log near where they’re setting camp for the night, all blustery indignation about the hirikka’s untimely death. Geralt stays awake.

***

He wishes he didn’t.

***

There’s a shortcut that the dwarves know about, a path that’ll take one day instead of two. Borch grins and follows their lead. The curse nods Geralt’s head, tells Jaskier to go on ahead as it sends him running after Yen. Probably wants her magic on their side of the fight that will inevitably ensue.

If he thought walking was fire, the light jog is an inferno. His vision whites out for a moment, and there must be a knife in his leg, mustn’t there? Or a tooth, caught in the muscle, digging deeper and deeper each time he shifts.

His screams stay locked safely away inside his skull as he reaches her. She sighs when she sees him, frustration bubbling away under the surface of her skin. But not grief. No tears welling up in her eyes, no traces of them either. Despite Sir Eyck’s untimely death, she isn’t mourning.

He refuses to feel happy about that.

“That bastard Bolhort killed my escort before he could accomplish the one damn task I actually needed him for!” she snaps.

“And what was that?” the curse replies. “What are you really doing here?”

It holds Geralt’s muscles taut as it waits for her reply, and for the first time since it threatened to turn Roach into glue, he is terrified of what this thing might do to another. What it might do to Yen if it finds her answer dangerous.

“I’m here for the dragon,” she says.

It tilts Geralt’s head and stays silent. Yen licks her lips, looking away from him. Embarrassed? Or ashamed?

“There are certain healing properties it’s rumored to possess,” she says quickly, eyes darting back and forth. Healing? What could she possibly need to heal?

“I thought your transformation healed all parts of you.”

“At the cost of losing others, yes.”

He realizes what she’s talking about right as the curse pulls back his lips and laughs. In Yennefer’s face. About an organ being torn from her body without her consent, about a possible path being torn from her future without her consent.

“Yennefer. Do not tell me you’ve traveled all this way for made-up fertility cures using fresh dragon hearts.” Gods, he can _hear_ the sneer in his voice.

“They’re not made up.”

“They are. And seriously? _You?_ A mother?”

She blinks, quick and fluttering.

“Do you think I’d make a bad one?” And now she sounds hurt, an aching sort of pain slipping into her voice, as she stares at him like she’s seeing him for the first time.

“Definitely.”

She turns away from him, her shoulders heaving. The curse doesn’t let up.

“A child? What could you possibly want with a child?”

It’s trying to brand doubt into her brain, Geralt realizes. Burn away her motivation for going after the dragon, convince her to leave it alone. He’s shocked that it thinks this’ll work. He’s shocked that it thinks this’ll do anything but strengthen her resolve.

It might have lived inside him the whole time he’s known Yennefer, it might have seen everything she chose to show him. But it doesn’t know her. Not one bit.

“They took my choice!” she snaps. “I want it back. Not that I’d expect you to understand.”

And that. That—

_Please please **PLEASE** Yen, I understand, I understand more than you know, I just—please **listen to me.**_

“I didn’t choose to become a witcher,” the curse growls, wielding what it’s done to Geralt like a sword to cut down Yen’s anger at him.

_Please let me sleep._

It shifts his weight. His leg throbs.

He stays awake.

***

The curse manages to persuade Yen to come with them, though Geralt isn’t entirely sure how. He’s not—gray or hazy, not exactly, but the world is getting ever fuzzier with each step, as his leg burns fiercer and hotter. His awareness is being eaten up by pain, pain, pain.

The sight of the dwarves’ shortcut dulls that pain, if only to replace it with a sharp, horrid fear.

Ever since Geralt was a child, he’s hated heights. It’s the one irrational fear that survived his training. No matter how many balance beams and tiny ledges his instructors forced him to walk across, the absolute certainty that he was going to slip and fall and die never abated. He’d lost track of the number of times he sat down on the middle of a high-up obstacle course, sobbing and unable to fathom taking another step. He’d lost track of the number of beatings he took for his weakness.

Crying is not an option now. Stopping is not an option now. The curse curls his fingers over the chains and plants his feet on the board, shuffling him along bit by bit. And he can’t catch himself if he slips, he has to _rely_ on this thing to not let him fall, and—and he wants to die, he wants to escape, but gods, not like this. He doesn’t want to spend his last few moments alive falling through the open air, unable to even flail his limbs.

One step. Another. A sob that he’ll never let go of is building in his throat.

Jaskier slips and he wants to scream, he wants to turn around and get off this mountain and never leave solid ground again, he wants—

Behind him, there’s a sharp crack. A yelp of surprise. The curse whirls him around and snatches up the loose chain, bringing Borch, Téa, and Véa jolting to a halt mid-fall.

Jaskier and Yennefer scream, pleading with him to let go, to pull himself to safer ground. But the curse has locked his muscles in place, refusing to let humans die, even as his own board creaks dangerously below him.

_I want to go home. I want to go home, I wanna go home, I wanna—_

He doesn’t have a home to go back to, and he knows it, but the fear, the pain, the loneliness, the fact that he’s about to die in front of two people he loves with everything that’s left of him—it swallows up every last part of his real life until all that’s left is a foolish, childish desperation.

_I wanna go **HOME.**_

“Sir Witcher, you will save us yet,” Borch grunts, his arms shaking. “But first, you must let go.”

“No,” the curse growls. _Pleasepleasepleaseplease._ “I won’t.”

And Borch—smiles at him. A sad, broken smile, and there’s something like pity in his eyes.

“Won’t?” he asks. “Or can’t?”

And Geralt is absolutely certain, in that moment, that Borch knows.

That someone _knows_ what’s happened to him.

But before that thought can process in his mind, before he can even feel a sliver of hope, Borch lets go of the chain.

***

Everything is hazy.

He’s vaguely aware of Jaskier sitting next to him.

Everything is blank.

“We could go to the coast. Get away for a while,” Jaskier murmurs, and Geralt _aches._

Everything hurts.

Because all he wants to do is go somewhere safe, with Jaskier and Yennefer and his child surprise, somewhere safe and warm and free of monsters. A cottage by the sea, his child playing in the surf, Jaskier strumming his lute on the beach, Geralt and Yennefer dancing around him as the sunrise paints the sky purple.

He wants—

He wants freedom. He wants love. He wants—

“Composing your next song?” the curse growls, and he lets the gray wash over him like the waves he’ll never see.

***

He comes back up to the sound of a low voice rumbling in his mind, reverberating through every bit of his conscious. It’s like being doused in cold water, shocked from a dream.

**Sir Witcher and his sorceress. Hello again.**

He and Yen are standing side by side in a cave, and a huge golden dragon—a dragon that shouldn’t be real, speaking with Borch’s voice—towers above them, flanked by Téa and Véa. Téa and Véa, who fell to their deaths. Téa and Véa, who should be dashed to pieces over the rocks.

Is he hallucinating? Is this his tattered mind, struggling to cope?

Or is this—

“Impossible,” the curse spits.

—is this real?

“When the dragoness was injured, her cry was heard by Villentretenmerth,” Téa explains.

“But the egg could not be moved,” Véa continues. “Or the life inside it would die.”

It makes sense—it makes—and that means that maybe—

 _Can you hear me?_ he asks, flinging his consciousness towards Borch. _Please, **please, can you—?**_

He feels something very ancient wrap around his mind and place it gently back inside his skull. There’s a pang of regret. Of guilt.

 ** _HELP ME,_** Geralt howls. **_PLEASE HELP ME._**

A soothing warmth slips across his consciousness, like a parent comforting a sobbing child.

 **Hush now,** Borch murmurs. **Hush.**

_I can’t, I can’t, please, I’ve been trapped for years, you—you need to help me, you need—_

**Patience—**

_Please, **please, I’M DYING.**_

Another pang of regret. And then Borch is untwining himself from Geralt’s mind, firmly peeling Geralt’s frantic thoughts of off himself like he’s shedding an unwanted coat. Geralt feels a wall come down between them, and he wails as he batters at it. _No no no no no, this was my only chance, **you** were my only chance, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t **LEAVE ME LIKE THIS.**_

Borch gives no indication of hearing him. He’s cut off Geralt’s thoughts like they were an inconvenience. Leaving him to drown.

Still, Geralt doesn’t stop screaming, even as the Reavers attack, even as the curse cuts down a dozen men with Geralt’s hands. He rages and sobs and claws at the wall, if only in his head. Hopefully Borch can feel just an inch of his pain, hopefully he will relent, hopefully—

_You brought me here because you knew I’d be forced to protect your egg, you’re just **using me,** I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be doing this, I want to go home._

The curse whirls around and sends six men flying with Aard.

_I want to go home._

_I want to go home._

**_I want to go home._ **

**_LET ME GO HOME._ **

There’s a horrible pained growl as Borch shrinks closer to his fallen mate.

 **Silence little one,** he whispers through the wall. **Calm.**

**_PLEASE LET ME OUT, PLEASE LET ME OUT, I’M BEGGING YOU, HELPMEHELPMEHELPME_ **

Borch whines, curling around his egg even as the fighting forces Geralt and Yen out of the cave. The wall strengthens between them.

 **I will,** he says. **But I cannot free you alone.**

The wall shoves forward, pressing Geralt firmly away from Borch.

 **If your sorceress is as clever as I think,** he says, sending more waves of warmth pouring over Geralt’s mind. **Then you will be free very soon indeed. You will be _home_ very soon indeed.**

_…please._

**Soon.**

He pulls back again, away from Geralt’s mind, and Geralt loses himself in the fight. He won’t let himself feel hope. Not when every grasp he’s ever made towards freedom has just made him more of a prisoner.

He crushes the small part of his heart that wants this time to be different.

***

Much later, after the curse saves Yen’s life and she saves Geralt’s in turn, after Jaskier comes darting up to the cave, frantic and confused, after the dwarves have been sent on their way with handfuls of dragon teeth, they sit at a pile of stones and listen to Borch talk about his child.

Geralt has fallen silent inside his head.

The haze is clawing at him, tugging at his exhaustion, at the infection in his leg, at the grief pouring through him. _Just fall under and it’ll all go away._ It’s taking everything he has just to stay present. Borch keeps casting worried looks in his direction.

“I can see why Geralt did not want to lose you,” he tells Yennefer eventually, his gentle smile not fully erasing his tight expression. “Why he would give up so much for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Yennefer asks. Before Borch can even open his mouth, the curse is answering her.

“In Rinde. The djinn.”

Horror blooms across her face.

“That’s why we can’t escape each other,” she chokes.

_No._

“Why I feel this way inside.”

**_No._ **

“It’s not because of anything real. Or true. You made a wish. It’s—” And her face _breaks,_ and if he could go a lifetime without seeing that expression on her again, this one time would still be enough to shatter him _._ “It’s magic.”

“It’s real, Yen,” the curse says, but it doesn’t care if she stays, not really.

 ** _Tell her,_** he screams at Borch. **_Tell her, tell her—_**

“Disregard for other’s freedom has become quite your trademark,” Yen snarls, and Geralt wants to laugh, and laugh, and laugh until tears are streaming down his face.

But instead, the curse shoves him to his feet, spitting awful words at her, cruel words, words that turn the broken look on her face into full-on sobs.

“You flit about like a tornado. Wreaking havoc, and for what? So you can have a baby? A child is no way to boost your fragile ego, _Yen.”_

“I’ll take advice from you about children as soon as you take responsibility for the one you bound to you and then abandoned!”

_That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, that’s what **started this.** I want to be her father, I want to be her family, I want—_

“That’s enough,” Borch says. “I’m going to save you both a lot of hurt with a little pain now. The sorceress will never regain her womb. And Geralt—I can only hope that you can regain your freedom.”

_That’s it? That’s **all** you’re going to say?_

A look of confusion flickers over Yen’s face. Just for a moment. Before it is replaced by a fury that could rival Borch’s flames.

“Freedom. Funny,” she says. “I’ll find a way to break your wishes. Drag another djinn from a river myself, if you have to. And then you’ll have your freedom. From me and your child both.”

She turns on her feet and storms off. The curse turns Geralt’s back on her.

 _Please,_ he begs the solid wall of Borch’s mind. _She didn’t figure it out from that, you need to do more than **hope**_ _I’ll go free._

“Freedom?” Jaskier’s voice. Tremulous and concerned. Just like he gets whenever he sees Geralt, whenever he’s worrying over Geralt’s food, or his wounds, or his sleep. “Freedom from what, exactly?”

The curse coils in his chest, thrashing at his bones. Anxious. Confused. _Panicking._

“Geralt?” Jaskier asks, taking a step closer. “What did he—”

“Dammit, Jaskier,” the curse snarls, spinning Geralt to face him. “Why is that whenever I find myself in a pile of shit these days, it’s you, shoveling it?”

_No. No, you can’t, you can’t drive him away too, you can’t make **me** drive him away too, please don’t, please, please please please please, gods, **don’t—**_

“Well that’s not fair,” Jaskier whispers, and he has that same broken look that Geralt had put on Yen’s face.

“The child surprise—“ the curse— _Geralt—_ says. “The djinn, all of it! If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.”

The curse turns around pointedly, ignores the shaky exhales behind him, although he _knows_ they signift that Jaskier is on the verge of tears.

“Right then—” Jaskier says, and those nearly-tears are in his voice too. “Right. I’ll—what the fuck?”

Sharp, quick footsteps. A hand on his shoulder.

“Turn around,” Yen tells him. Her voice has that same righteous fury, but it’s shot through with what Geralt thinks might be fear. And he’s never heard her scared before.

The curse turns around.

The tears are still wet on Yennefer’s cheeks. Behind her, Jaskier is wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his doublet, and Geralt wants nothing more to take back everything he said to both of them, to beg their forgiveness.

“What?” the curse snarls instead, putting all the distain in the world into that one word.

Yen looks at him. The fear is growing on her face.

“Me, me I could understand. But as much as it pains me, you love that fucking bard more than your own life. Rinde was proof enough of that.”

The curse takes a step back, shrugging her hand off his shoulder. She follows him, matching him step for step.

“Geralt?” she asks, and the anger drains from her. “What’s wrong with you?”


	7. o, there's a light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few lovely things! [striffyisme](https://striffyisme.tumblr.com) has made a wonderful [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0UeBOxqz5C9mRQbbikK0Qd?si=KwVDDL_ER5Ocnhd5-n_Sgg) for this fic over on Spotify with not one but _two_ versions of "My Body is a Cage" which tbh should have been the song inspiration for this fic instead of Weight of Living.
> 
> And [nanero11](https://nanero11.tumblr.com) has made some truly gorgeous [fanart](https://nanero11.tumblr.com/post/618214729282977792/seriously-if-you-havent-read-when-you-just-cant) of the bath scene in chapter five. Thank you both so much, seriously, you don't know how much it means to me that someone likes my work enough to _make stuff_ for it.
> 
> This chapter is definitely the one I was most excited to write (can you tell based on my upload dates?) so...have fun!

The curse tries to insist that nothing is wrong. That he’s perfectly fine, he wants them to leave him alone.

“I can feel the heat pouring off of you,” Yen frowns, moving her hand from his shoulder to the back of his neck. Her fingers are cool against his burning skin, like precious shards of ice on a hot summer day.

“How long have you had a fever?”

“Leave me alone.”

“How long have you had a fever?” she repeats. “You’ve been ridiculously pale on this entire excursion. Were you sick before we started up the mountain?”

The curse doesn’t answer, just gazes mulishly over her shoulder.

Jaskier shakes himself out of his daze, drawing his arms across his chest. He looks lost. Small. Like the world has just dropped onto his shoulders and asked him to make sense of it.

“Are you hurt?” he asks Geralt. “Are you—witchers don’t get sick, you said, so it must be something else, right?”

Yen sighs.

“If you’re not going to tell us—” she says, and her magic rushes over him like a warm wave. He relaxes into it even as the curse snarls at her.

“I’m fine.

“We’ve already established you’re not,” Yen says, keeping a hand on his neck as she works. The curse growls, but short of attacking her, there’s not much it can do to stop her spell. Yen is an unstoppable force once she starts caring about something.

He can see it in her face when her spell reaches his leg. A spark of pain flies across her features, and her hand trembles against him.

“We’re going back to my tent,” she says, slipping under his arm. “And getting you in bed.”

Jaskier coughs, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.

“Should I um. Should I be going then?”

“I don’t know. How are you with open wounds? Infection?”

Her worry is a choking thing, chaos sparking against Geralt’s skin.

“Infection?” Jaskier says, voice cracking with fear. _“Infection?”_

“I have it handled,” the curse grunts, trying to pull Geralt’s arm from Yen’s shoulders. She just holds on tighter, pressing a bit of chaos into her fingers to strengthen her grip.

“What are you planning on doing, exactly?” she says, tugging Geralt towards the campground. “Chopping it off yourself? Tying a piece of wood to the stump and going on your merry way?”

Nausea rises in his gut. Is it…is it that bad? Had the curse let his injury get so out of hand that he’d lose his leg? It wasn’t content with taking his body for itself, was it? It wanted to strip it away entirely.

Jaskier makes an awful strangled sound, darting around to Geralt’s other side.

“Why didn’t you say something?” he chides, tucking himself under his arm, taking half of his weight from Yen’s shoulders. His eyes are still red with tears, his body still shaking with unvoiced sadness, but he tucks all that hurt away in favor of worry. In favor of helping.

Geralt loves them both. He loves both of them _so much._

The curse does not. The curse has always considered them expendable. It must consider them a threat now, considering that they’ve discovered an injury no man should be able to bear. And their necks are under its arms. He can feel it drinking in the power of his muscles, considering its options, now that they’re onto its scent.

 _Run,_ he thinks as hard as he can. _Just run._

They don’t hear him. They’ve never heard him. But the curse doesn’t snap their bones beneath it, doesn’t tear them to shreds for the crime of caring. It just seethes. Waits. Maybe it’ll strike when they’ve fixed up his leg. Maybe it’ll strike when they start demanding how he walked on it.

There’s a sob in his chest and a cold fear yawning beneath him, around him, threatening to swallow him whole. The realization that he’s going to have to watch his hands as they grow red with Yen’s blood, with Jaskier’s.

The gray hums invitingly, but he forces himself to stay in his body. If he’s going to murder his loves, he refuses to let go of that guilt.

***

They lay him down on the bed, resting his head on a lilac-scented pillow, and with a single brush of Yen’s fingers, his left pant leg melts away up to the knee, exposing the calf beneath.

Jaskier retches.

Yennefer curses.

“Shit, fuck, how the _fuck_ did you walk on this?” she chokes, her fingers fluttering over the hot skin. “There are teeth _in the wound,_ Geralt, _what—?”_

“I’ll be fine,” the curse says, letting some of Geralt’s pain seep into its words as Yen prods at the wound. Trying to drop at least some of the stoicism, now that the extent of the injury has been revealed.

 _Too late,_ he thinks at it viciously. _Too fucking late._

“You have blood poisoning,” Yen spits, pressing her chaos into the wound. His fevered flesh drinks the magic in like drought-dried soil lapping up the first rain. “This would’ve killed you. In a matter of hours.”

“I’m a witcher—” the curse tries, and Jaskier laughs hysterically.

“I’ve seen you laid up for weeks with simpler wounds than this,” he says. He’s not wrong. Back when Geralt had control of his body, he always tried to rest as much as he could afford to, when he came back injured from a contract. Injuries made you slow, after all, and a slow witcher is a dead witcher.

The masters didn’t weave that knowledge into the curse. Didn’t teach it to detect when a wound is serious, just like they didn’t teach it to detect when the weather is too cold to sleep outside.

“I got stronger,” the curse mutters, turning his head away from Jaskier. Trying to hurt them again, trying to drive them away again. _Won’t work now, you bastard. You might make them hate me, but they’re too good to leave me to die._

Yen pulls away from his leg and steps over to the washbasin on her bedside table, filling it with a flick of her wrist. There’s tension in every line of her back, the same tension that she had carried in Rinde, right before she had forced Geralt to beat up half of the city council. She’s planning something.

“That spell should hold it off for now,” she says. “But you need to rest.”

She pulls a washcloth from the basin and kneels down next to Geralt’s head, pressing it against his hot face. The curse closes his eyes with a huff. She continues undeterred, moving the cloth in gentle sweeps across his forehead. Tracing small circles over his temple, right over his brain, and this is the closest he’s ever felt to her. He wants to breathe out a sigh, soft and content, and he wants to curl up in her arms, and he wants to cry, and he wants, he wants, he wants—

He’s still.

And then her fingertip slips off the edge of the cloth and onto his skin.

 _Geralt?_ her voice echoes in his mind. For a moment, he can’t even think to reply, too dazed by the thing that he’s prayed for for years. But only for a moment.

He gathers up every bit of strength he has and _screams._

**_HELP ME._ **

Her hand jerks against his skin but she doesn’t stop in her gentle motions. Her finger stays pressed against his temple.

**_HELP ME HELP ME GODS PLEASE LET ME OUT GET ME OUT OF HERE YEN PLEASE I’M BEGGING YOU I—DON’T LEAVE ME GODS I’VE BEEN TRAPPED FOR SO LONG, DON’T LEAVE._ **

Her breath hitches in her throat. Something like a sob shakes out of her chest, and the cloth freezes on his skin. The curse tenses Geralt’s muscles. Opens his eyes.

Yen’s eyes are ringed with red. She’s shaking all over, like a leaf caught in a thunderstorm, helpless against the changing world.

“Yennefer?” Jaskier says, hesitant. Scared. “What’s going on?”

“I—I don’t—gods, _Geralt.”_

She says his name like a prayer. Something desperate and hopeless and sacred. Something whispered over the bed a of dying thing.

“What?” the curse growls. But it seems to realize what she’s done. It curdles in his chest, gnashes its teeth, batters furiously at his bones. A shock of pain ripples through him, the first one since that last dreadful moment of freedom, and Yen gasps. Her hand spasms against his skin. Another shock. Another. She doesn’t let go of him, though the tears have spilled from her eyes and drawn wet lines down her cheeks. The shocks subside, the curse settling back into his muscles, spitting angrily.

“What’s going on?” Jaskier repeats, the fear grown into full-blown terror. He kneels down on Geralt’s other side, his eyes darting between him and Yen. “What’s wrong, is he—?”

“He’s—”

The curse shifts his weight.

_Yen—!_

Before he can get a warning out, the curse bats her hand off his face with a furious snarl and lunges to the slide, slamming into Yen and knocking her to the floor, pinning her down by her shoulders. She struggles beneath him, squirming and shouting, bringing up her hands to shove ineffectually at his chest.

“What the _fuck?”_ Jaskier screams. The bed creaks as he throws himself over it. His fingers scrabble to find purchase on Geralt’s back, shoulders, hair. “What the fuck, get _off of her!”_

The curse throws an elbow back, catching Jaskier in the stomach and sending him slamming into the side of the bed. A loud crack echoes through the air, followed by a pained moan.

_No._

It turns its attention back to Yen.

_No._

Wraps his fingers around her neck.

_No._

“He is _never_ getting free, you understand that, witch?”

_Nononononono—_

Her hand curls into a claw and she flicks her fingers outward. There’s flash of brilliant violet light and something slams into his chest, sending him flying backwards, arcing over Jaskier’s crumpled body to land on the bed.

Shit, that was close.

The curse sits him up, face still pulled into a gruesome sneer. Yen flicks her fingers again and he’s shoved back against the mattress, his limbs pinned still. The curse turns his head to the side, scowling down at its captors. Yen crawls over to Jaskier, gasping, one hand curled lightly over her throat.

“You alright?” she asks him.

“Think so,” Jaskier winces, letting her tug him into a seated position. “But what—what just—Geralt, why—?”

“That’s not Geralt,” Yen says, pulling herself and Jaskier to their feet. “I—I don’t think it’s been Geralt for a very long time.”

Jaskier stares down at Geralt like he’s seeing him for the first time.

“What, like a doppler?” he asks, his eyes darting to the entrance where Geralt’s swords are lying haphazardly. Yen shakes her head, a sob bubbling out of her throat. A proper one this time. She brings up a hand to cover her mouth, shuddering. Jaskier takes an aborted step towards her. His hands twitch in the air, like he wants to comfort her but doesn’t think he’s allowed.

“He’s possessed,” she manages to spit out between her heaving gasps. “Or—or enthralled. He’s not—he’s screaming in his head, Jaskier.”

Jaskier’s face goes pale.

“Are you serious?”

She nods.

“When—when you say ‘a long time.’ How long do you mean?”

Yen shakes her head helplessly. She reaches for Geralt’s face again. The curse snarls, snapping his head around to bite at her fingers. She snatches her hand back just in time, then flicks purple light over his head, pressing it down into the pillow.

“I’m sorry,” she says, reaching out again. “I’m so sorry.”

“You should be,” the curse snarls. “You killed him.”

It breathes out. It doesn’t breathe back in.

_Oh gods._

He hasn’t tried to fight it in years. He knows there’s no point. But that knowledge flies far away from him as soon as his lungs freeze, and he strains with every bit of himself to take a breath, take a breath, _take a fucking—_

“He’s not breathing,” Jaskier chokes.

 _“Fuck.”_ The purple light flows around his face, down his nose. It finds something below his lungs and shoves down, _hard,_ forcing them to fill with air. And it fucking _hurts,_ but he’s breathing. He’s breathing. Yen is breathing for him.

“Gods,” Jaskier says. He slumps to the floor next to the bed. “Gods. It—it can control his—”

Yen’s clenches her hands into fists. Her eyes burn as furiously as they did in Rinde, brimming with power, anger, indignation.

“Give me your hand,” she tells Jaskier, kneeling down next to him and holding hers out.

“Why?” he asks his knees. He’s shivering all over.

“So we can talk to the actual Geralt,” she says. “So we can get— _whatever_ that is out of him.”

Jaskier threads his fingers with hers without hesitation.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”

Yen puts her other hand on Geralt’s forehead.

“You with me?” she asks him.

_Yes. Yes, gods, thank you._

“Don’t thank me,” she says, closing her eyes. “Don’t. It took— _how_ long did it take for me to notice?”

And this is going to hurt them. This is going to wound them both.

_Six years._

“Six—”

Jaskier buries his face in his knees. There’s an awful noise pouring out of him, high and strained and wild. Grieving.

“Off and on?” Yen asks.

_No. That was—earlier it was, it only kept me under for a bit at a time, but I—I fought it and it got worse and worse. And then—in Rinde I was gonna ask you to read my mind, I **almost** managed it, but it just—it snapped, and it bound me and I can’t fucking **breathe** on my own._

Jaskier is curling tighter and tighter with each thought, and Yen is looking more and more like a woman carved out of stone, betrayed only by the tears still streaming down her face. He half-wants to stop, to reel his pain in, to stop it from hurting them. But the horror is like a river, stopped up by a dam that just crumbled into dust. He can’t stop it from spilling out of him.

_Please help me, please help me, **please—**_

“We will,” Yen says. She flattens her hand over his cheek, thumbing over his skin, like he's the one who needs tears wiped away. “We will. I promise. I just need to figure out exactly what we’re dealing with, and then we’ll get you free.”

 _It’s been on me since the trials._ He’s desperate, now, to tell them everything. Jaskier sobs into his knees, bringing up his free hand to grasp at his hair, pulling it tight enough that it _must_ hurt.

“The witcher trials?” Yen says. “This happened when you were a _kid?”_

_Yeah, but it wasn’t always—I didn’t—I didn’t even know it was here at first, it was—they don’t want me to leave, they don’t want any of us to leave._

He knows his thoughts aren’t making any sense, fractured and fragmentary as they are, but it’s been so fucking long since he was able to talk to anyone, to shape his thoughts into words. He’s forgotten _how_ to make sense.

“Any of you?” Yen asks.

“Any witchers?” Jaskier mumbles. “Is that what you mean? It—it wants to force witchers to keep hunting monsters?”

_Yeah. Yes, that’s it, I think—it, it started with shocking me. Like you felt earlier, Yen, just doing that whenever I thought about leaving the Path. And erasing my memory of it. And then—in Cintra, I wanted to claim my child surprise, I wanted to so **badly,** and it just—it couldn’t shock it out of me, so it made me walk away. That’s when I knew it was there._

“Cintra?” Jaskier sounds broken. “Fucking Cintra? This _thing_ has been tugging you around like a puppet since _Cintra,_ and I didn’t—I didn’t fucking notice, I—”

“There’ll be time for guilt later,” Yen tells him firmly. “I know what this is. It’s a staged thrall. Someone put a _staged thrall_ on a fucking _child.”_

 _Children. All of us,_ he repeats. _All of us. My family, my brothers, Vesemir—_

“Every witcher that’s ever lived,” Yen breathes. “I—this wasn’t just one mage. This was organized, this was _intentional._ The Brotherhood must have had some hand in it.”

She grits her teeth. Presses her fingers down into Geralt’s skin like an anchor. A promise.

“After we free you,” she says, steady and sure. “We’ll free your brothers. We’ll free _all_ of you. And then I’m gonna hunt down every single mage who had a hand in this, every single mage who _knew_ and let you suffer, and I will make them _pray_ for death. I will make them beg me—beg _you,_ beg all the witchers that are living with this monster—for that mercy. _”_

Her anger is steadying, oddly enough. Comforting. The bright surety of it, the certainty that he’ll be free enough to grant anyone mercy.

“Count me in,” Jaskier says, and his voice is sharp and vicious and full of tears.

“Of course,” Yen says, squeezing his hand. “Of course.”

Jaskier takes a shuddering breath. He uncurls from his ball, cutting quick glances at Geralt like he can hardly bear to look at him.

“So how do we break it?” he says. “You said it was a staged thrall, what—what _is_ that?”

“It’s dark magic. _Awful_ magic, the kind of thing that no mage should’ve ever even thought to invent. Does just what he said. Starts out with shocks and memory tampering, then progresses to longer and longer periods of control when the victim tries to fight, until eventually—” She gestures at Geralt helplessly. “This happens. And—and once it gets this bad, it’s—it’s imprecise, it’s messy, it doesn’t know how to keep a person _alive_ long-term. It just knows how to execute its primary mission and avoid detection.”

“Every single time I saw you,” Jaskier whispers. “Since Rinde. I always thought you looked too thin. Too tired. Too injured or too _sick,_ and I never did anything, and this—this whole time, it’s been—”

“It’s been this thing,” Yen finishes. Her voice is shattered. “Killing him.”

 _Wouldn’t let me sleep inside,_ Geralt thinks. It feels almost like a dream, it feels almost like a vision before death. This letting go. _Winter or not. Wouldn’t let me cook my food, wouldn’t let me see a healer, wouldn’t—_

Jaskier crumples against Yen’s side. She gives in to his weight, holding him there easily.

_Wouldn’t let me tell you I love you. Either of you. I love you both, so much, you know that right? I love you, I **love** you, I love you so much I think it might kill me._

Jaskier falls further. Turns his face into Yen’s shoulder with a strangled sob.

He should probably stop thinking now.

 _Please tell me you know that,_ he says anyway. _Please tell me you know that, at least._

“I do,” Yen says. She sits up on her knees and presses a kiss into Geralt’s forehead. “I do,” she whispers again, against his skin.

Jaskier won’t stop crying.

***

Aretuza mages learn about the darkest forms of magic, curses that can break a person’s life down and put it back together at the caster’s will, curses that can boil blood and steal sense and turn flesh into living, thinking stone. A thousand fates worse than death, a thousand forbidden things.

They also learn how to break these spells. How to put things right when a mage claims that kind of power for their own.

Yen traces the sigil carefully into the ground, brow furrowed in concentration. Like it’s the most important thing she’s ever done in her life. Jaskier sits beside Geralt on the bed, running his fingers through his hair. Geralt focuses on that, so he can ignore the tears shining on Jaskier’s face, the furious guilt bursting through every inch of Yen, the curse growling furiously in his bones. He just focuses on the feeling of Jaskier’s callouses against his scalp, the steady rhythm to his touch.

“Right,” Yen murmurs, after what feels like hours. “It’s time.”

Jaskier scrambles off the bed. Yen flicks her fingers, tugging at the violet light she has embedded in Geralt’s limbs. His legs swing over the side of the bed. Anticipation boils in his stomach, rises in his throat. Freedom is so close, closer than it’s ever been. He can practically taste it on his tongue, fresh and cold as spring water.

“Are you ready?” Yen asks, stepping forward to rest a hand on his cheek. Jaskier snatches up her hand so that he can hear the answer. He snatches up Geralt’s hand, too, just because. Geralt’s fingers stay limp in his.

 _Yes,_ he tells them. _Yes, gods yes. And…whatever happens, I—thank you._

Jaskier brings his Geralt’s hand up to his mouth, muffling a sob against his skin. His eyes are squeezed shut.

“Again. You don’t need to thank us,” Yennefer says, brushing her lips over Geralt’s forehead.

“You really, really don’t,” Jaskier agrees, shuddering around each word.

Neither of them wear guilt well. It clings around their shoulders like an ill-fitting coat dulling their brightness beneath its heavy mantle. But he doesn’t protest their shame, doesn’t begrudge them it. Untangling it will take time, months and years that he can only hope that they’ll get.

“Okay,” Yennefer whispers, stepping away from him and flicking her fingers again. “Okay.”

Geralt steps into the circle and lowers himself to the ground. He can feel the curse thrashing against his ribcage, battling ineffectively against Yennefer’s spell. It wants to force him to run, to kill, to die. But it doesn’t hold the power, not anymore.

Not ever again.

One way or another, it’s going to die here.

Yennefer kneels down and gathers Geralt in her arms, drawing his torso over her lap and supporting his head with one arm so that he can look up at her.

Then she takes a deep breath and begins to chant.

The chaos whirls around her and him both. He can feel it seeping through his skin and into his blood, a furious warrior come to destroy the intruder lurking in his bones. The curse howls in response, digging down impossibly deeper. Pain shocks through him in waves, rippling from head to toe as the curse grapples with his nerves, as Yen’s magic tries desperately to rip it out. Her chanting gets louder, firmer, and her fingers dig tighter into Geralt’s skin. It would hurt, he thinks, if he wasn’t already burning.

“What’s happening?” Jaskier gasps, shivering just outside the circle. His eyes are wide with fear and his hands jerk like he wants to reach forward and grab Geralt.

“Curse is fighting back,” Yen says through gritted teeth, before resuming the chant. She curls closer to Geralt, and the smell of her magic swims around him, _inside_ him, lilac and gooseberries and ozone. Purple lines race up her arms and face, pulsing with power. She blinks, and her pupils disappear, eaten up by violet.

 _Stop,_ he thinks frantically. _Stop, stop, this is too much for you—_

“Can’t stop,” she chokes. Another pulse of magic races through him, flaking away the edges of the monster. But it isn’t enough. He can tell that it isn’t enough.

_We can try again later—_

“We _can’t._ It’s in full defense mode now, it’s going for your heart, your brain—Geralt if I stop now it’ll kill you.”

Jaskier curses, but it sounds very far away. His vision is getting dark around the corners.

 _“No!”_ Yennefer howls, and a blast of chaos sears through his veins. Her entire body is glowing now, a violent purple that hurts to look at.

 _It’s okay,_ he thinks. _It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay._

Because it is. Because even if he dies, that’ll mean that he’s free.

And he should have known. He should have known he wouldn’t get to survive this. He should have known not to hope.

“It’s not _fucking okay!_ I’m not losing you!”

Her voice is tinged with hysteria, and her words come out as a half-scream, but she’s flagging. Geralt can tell. She’s sagging forward, even as she howls out another wave of magic, even as the glow shines impossibly brighter.

_Don’t die for me, don’t—_

“I love you,” she screams. “I love you, and I let you suffer for so fucking long, and I’m not letting you die without knowing what freedom feels like.”

“Yen,” Jaskier says as she tips even further forward. “Yen, what do you need?”

“More—more _energy—_ fuck, it’s strong.”

“Just energy? Not chaos?”

“I’ve got more than enough chaos,” Yen snarls.

“Okay. Okay. You need energy?”

And he shifts, pulling away from the side of the circle to plaster himself to her back, wrapping his arms around her from behind.

“Then take mine,” he says. And there are no tears in his voice anymore. Just steadiness, and determination, and what Geralt thinks might be love.

_No, no, no, Jask, Yen, **DON’T.** I’m not worth it, I’m not—_

“You’re worth _everything,”_ Jaskier says, and the purple glow surrounds him too, folding him in its embrace like a lover, but it’s _killing him,_ it’s killing them _both,_ and Geralt can’t—

The magic flowing through his veins strengthens, grows from a river to a tidal wave, breathless in its intensity.

“Enjoy your freedom,” Yen tells him, her grip weakening as the magic grows stronger. “Enjoy it, Geralt. Make the world your own.”

_No, no, no, no—_

Jaskier goes limp against her back.

**_Nonononono—_ **

And Geralt feels something crack and scream and die in his chest.

_“No!”_

Yennefer smiles down at him, weak and loving, and collapses.

There’s a moment, short but agonizing, where he thinks he might start screaming and never stop. That he’ll never be able to rid himself of this grief.

But then his own voice echoes in his ears.

_I wish for Yennefer and Jaskier to stay safe._

Yen’s hair flutters against her face.

_Keep them safe._

The wind sweeps through the room, slipping around Yen and Jaskier’s bodies, swirling faster and faster.

_Just keep them safe._

And then Geralt hears another voice. Something ancient and power and reveling in its freedom.

_Wish granted, little one._

They gasp into the wind just as the darkness slides over Geralt’s vision.

***

Awareness comes back slowly, a gradual sharpening of muffled noise. There are two voices around him. He gets first _human,_ and then _adults,_ and then _male and female,_ and then _Jaskier and Yen._ They’re murmuring softly—to each other, to him, he doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. He just wraps himself up in the feeling of safety and lets himself drift.

_They’re alive. They’re alive. They’re alive._

It’s peaceful. It’s nice. He’d stay here forever, if he could.

But he has to wake up sometime. Wake up and face his actual life. Consciousness is tugging insistently at his eyelids and he can’t keep himself in this hazy half-dream forever.

His eyes flick open. Jaskier is hovering over him, pale-faced and red-eyed. He gasps, soft and awed, the breath of a softhearted child seeing a baby bird emerge from its shell.

“Yennefer,” he says over his shoulder. “Yennefer, he’s awake. And—”

Yen appears above him too, her face tight and exhausted and so very beautiful. They’re both so beautiful, these two people that he loves with every fiber of his brain, and his breath stutters at the sight of them, freezing for a moment in his chest.

And he shouldn’t—

He shouldn’t be able to do that.

He lost such frivolities as sighs and gasps and you-steal-my-breath-aways a long, long time ago. But here he is, with unsteady lungs. And an unsteady hope gathering to match.

He exhales. Inhales. Holds.

Holds.

He can hold his breath.

He lifts a hand up off the floor. Wiggles his fingers. It feels like a dream, commanding his own limbs, marrying his brain and his body. He stares at his fingers as they move, one by one, and it isn’t someone else moving them. He tells them to stop wiggling, and they do. He tells them to start, and they follow his orders.

He gets his other arm underneath him and shoves himself upright, his muscles bunching and moving at his will. He’s sitting up because he wants to be, not because the curse has decided it’s time for him to wake and fight and kill. His strength is his to command, now. His arms are his, and his breath is his, and his _life_ is his for the first time in ninety years.

He’s—

He’s—

“I’m free,” he chokes, and his voice is his, his _words_ are his, and there are so many things he can say now. Tears gather in his eyes, tears that he hasn’t been allowed to shed since he was a child, but they’re _here,_ and they’re his, and they’re carrying his pain out of him.

Yen puts a hand on his cheek.

 _Are you really?_ her voice asks in his mind, understandably wary.

_Yes. Yes. I’m free, the curse is gone, I can move, I can breathe, I—you—_

“I’m free,” he says again, relishing in how he can make his voice dip and soar and rumble. “You _freed me.”_

He’s not sure who rushes forward first but they crash together in a tangle of limbs, arm to back and hand to cheek and head to shoulder. The tears pour out of him and he’s sobbing in their arms, holding them tightly against him. They hold him back, stroke gentle fingers through his hair, murmur soothing words into his ears. It’s a thunderstorm after an endless drought and he cries until there’s nothing left in him, and then he keeps crying. Because _fuck_ he had been a slave for years and years and years, and he’d thought that his own body would stay his prison till the day he died.

And now he’s free.

He’s _fucking free._


	8. your albatross, let it go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sooo sorry about the long wait on this one y'all, I had about a billion other things that I was working on. Good news though is that I've finally finished my other longfic, so this one will get a bit more of my attention! I'm aiming to have the next chapter out in the next two weeks, and you have my permission to yell at me in the comments or on tumblr ([geraltstiddyarmor](https://geraltstiddyarmor.tumblr.com)) if I break that promise.
> 
> Enjoy the chapter!

The three of them sit, curled together on the hard ground of the tent, for a long, long time. The tears just won’t _fucking stop—_ like all the ones he’d been unable to shed had stored up in his skull, only to all pour out at once the instant the dam was removed.

“Sorry,” he chokes. “Sorry, sorry, I can’t stop—”

“Don’t apologize,” Yen growls in his ear, squeezing him tighter. “Don’t you dare.”

Jaskier mumbles an agreement, soothes a hand down Geralt’s back. Geralt leans into the touch, sobbing again as his muscles shift smoothly at his will. Jaskier drops a kiss to the crown of his head, rocking the three of them back and forth. He starts humming something—and Geralt’s fairly sure it’s a lullaby, fairly sure he remembers Vesemir singing it to him, when he was young.

_Shit. Vesemir._

“We need to go,” Geralt says, voice choked with mucus. He squirms away from their embrace, although the loss of their warmth aches like a physical thing.

“What?” Jaskier croaks, wiping his eyes off on his shirt sleeve.

“Vesemir, Lambert, Eskel, _everyone._ I can’t—this thing is—I can’t _leave them.”_

It’s like it was earlier, when he tried to explain himself through Yen’s mind magic. Like he’s forgotten how to put his thoughts in order for other people, after so long without communication. He swallows rapidly, trying to soothe away the panic that he’s sure is twisting his face into something horrible.

Yen swears under her breath.

“It’s late,” she says, like it pains her to say the words. “The sun will be setting soon, and we can’t get down the mountain in the dark.”

“Can’t you conjure a light?” The urge to move, to _run,_ to _fly_ back to Kaer Morhen as fast as he can and rip this parasite out of his brothers—it’s almost overwhelming. The thought of waiting for daybreak, of letting them suffer an hour longer while he walks free, is even more so.

“I suppose, but—"

Geralt goes to push himself to his feet, but his legs buckle instantly, sending him crashing back to the floor. Jaskier yelps, diving forward to take some of Geralt’s weight on his lap.

“What’s wrong?” he says, hands fluttering over Geralt’s wounded leg. “Does it hurt still?”

“No,” Geralt says, though it isn’t fully true. His leg still stings like a nestful of ants is gnawing away the flesh. But that isn’t why he fell. “No, I just—I haven’t walked in six years. Not really.”

He’s not used to commanding his muscles, not used to balancing a thousand points of pressure into coherent motion. He’s free, but the curse is still tugging at his limbs, still hindering his movements. Still stopping him from saving his family.

Jaskier’s arms stop in their worrying, pulling back to wind around Geralt’s chest.

“Right,” he whispers. “Right. Of course.”

Yen leans forward, wiping away the tears Geralt didn’t even realize he’s still shedding.

“It’ll come back quick,” she says, and her voice has so much surety in it, even though she can’t possibly be sure. He closes his eyes and breathes in her touch, Jaskier’s touch, the scent of their sweat and tears, and lets himself believe her.

“Tomorrow morning,” Yen says. “We’ll work on getting your legs under you. And then, I promise you, we will ride to Kaer Morhen as fast as our horses can take us. For now…for now I think Jaskier and I can help you to bed.”

Geralt considers that. Considers the idea of drifting off to sleep in a big warm bed, the people he loves most on either side of him, free to toss and turn himself into a comfortable position. It’s almost the best thing he can imagine, for this first night of freedom.

Almost.

“No,” he says, and he marvels at the way that word feels in his mouth. “No, I—can we sleep outside tonight? I want—” Another diamond in his throat, so precious that he chokes on it for a moment. “—to watch the sunset. And the stars.”

He hadn’t missed those things quite as much as he’d missed sunrises, catching glimpses of the sky here and there on late-night contracts. But the curse certainly hadn’t let him linger in the middle of wide fields, hadn’t let him tilt back his head and take in the universe. Night was a time for sleep or hunting monsters, not for stargazing and dreaming.

Jaskier shivers against Geralt’s back, twists his hands into the fabric of Geralt’s shirt. Drops his head onto Geralt’s shoulder.

“Sure we can,” he says, and his voice is shaking. “Sure we— _fuck,_ Geralt, I—”

His words are cut off by a loud sob.

“Hey,” Geralt says. He drops his hands down to his waist and gently— _so_ gently, trying to pour the person he wants to be into his movements—peels Jaskier’s fingers off of his shirt. Jaskier’s hands go limp in his, like he isn’t sure what to do with them anymore. Geralt ducks under the circle of Jaskier’s arms and twists halfway around, so that Jaskier and Yen are sitting at his sides. Better. Now he can look at both of them.

“Hey,” he repeats, wiping the tears off Jaskier’s face, hesitantly copying Yen’s earlier movements. “It’s okay, Jask.”

And that seems to break something in him, properly break something, because he bows over himself like he’s just been stabbed in the gut, snatching his hands from Geralt’s to cover his face.

“Six years,” he wails, and Geralt can barely understand him around the wetness in his throat. “S-six _years,_ Geralt, and you forgot how to walk, and you haven’t seen the fucking _stars,_ and you couldn’t even breathe on your own, and did you—did you know what you sounded like, when Yen grabbed my hand? You were _screaming,_ you were _begging_ me to help you, and you’ve been doing that this whole fucking time, and I didn’t _hear you, I didn’t—”_

The words run out, leaving behind only sobs that sound as though they hurt coming out. It feels like someone has torn out Geralt’s heart and replaced it with a hot coal.

“No,” he says again, lifting his arms—have they always been this heavy?—and drawing Jaskier into his chest. “No, _no,_ it’s not your fault.”

“I—should—be—holding—you—” Jaskier gasps out between his hitching sobs. “I—I— _Geralt—”_

“No shoulds,” Geralt says, as firm as he can. Jaskier is shaking so hard that Geralt is worried he might vibrate apart. He rocks him back and forth, slipping a hand into his hair. “Not now. Only ams and wills. I am free. I am _with you._ I will stay with you.”

He turns his head to the side, meeting Yen’s uncertain gaze.

“Both of you,” he says. “And we—we will be happy.”

Simple. Childish. Not the words of a witcher.

But he’s not a witcher anymore.

“We will be happy,” he says again, like a prayer, a mantra, a promise.

“Jaskier isn’t a mindreader. But I am. You screamed out in your mind,” Yennefer whispers. “In Rinde. I—I heard you, and I ignored you, and—”

“And you didn’t know it was this spell,” Geralt says, determined to break her spiral of guilt before all three of them are crying again. “If you had—”

“I would have broken it in a heartbeat.”

“And I don’t blame you for not knowing. I—Witchers have walked the Continent for five hundred years. We’ve carried the curse for that long, if I had to guess. And in all that time, not one witcher has gone free. I’m the first. You two _made me_ the first.”

He lets go of Jaskier with one arm to take Yen’s hand.

“You gave me my life back,” he says. “And I want to spend it with you.”

Yen sniffs and draws a hand over her eyes. Jaskier burrows his face deeper into Geralt’s collarbone, no doubt getting snot all over his shirt.

“Will you let me?” he asks, trepidation creeping into his voice. Because he’s almost certain that they both love him. He’s almost certain that that love outweighs their guilt. But if it doesn’t…

He doesn’t even get to finish that thought.

“I have no idea why you’d want that,” Yen laughs wetly. “But yes. I will.”

For the first time Geralt has known him, Jaskier seems at a loss for words. He just nods against Geralt’s chest, slowly at first, and then faster and faster.

“Good,” Geralt says, feeling lighter than he’s felt since he was a child. He pulls away from Jaskier, cups his jaw in the hand not holding on to Yennefer. His face is bright red, wet with tears and sweat and snot.

“Gods, don’t watch me cry,” Jaskier sniffs, scrubbing his sleeve across his face. “I’m _such_ a messy crier, it’s embarrassing—”

Yen scoffs, reaching across Geralt’s lap to pass him a handkerchief. It’s purple, embroidered with flowers. That _would_ be Yen, blowing her nose on the color of royalty.

“I get the feeling we’re gonna be watching each other cry a lot,” she says as Jaskier mops at his face. “So better get over that embarrassment quick.”

Jaskier snorts. Pulls the handkerchief away. Looks down at it. Then at Yen.

“You know,” he says, almost cautiously. “I think you’re the kind of person I could fall in love with. Powerful. Beautiful. A flagrant disregard for authority.” He shakes the handkerchief to demonstrate. “And totally softhearted under all of that.”

Geralt can barely breathe for hope. Because he loves them both, and they love him, and if they love _each other_ too—

Well. He can hardly imagine what such a love would look like, left to bloom. But he thinks it might be the prettiest thing in the world.

Yen looks down at her hands. A small smile twitches over her lips, though she is fast to stamp it down.

“All that over a handkerchief,” she sighs. “ _Such_ a poet.”

They all know it’s not just the handkerchief. But Jaskier seems content to let Yen pretend, sitting back and watching her as she gets to her feet. She smooths down her dress, although, of course it’s wrinkleless. Magic fabric will do that.

She tilts her head, considering the two of them. Jaskier holds himself steady under her gaze, save for an occasional shivery aftersob.

“We’ll see,” she says at last, the smile sliding back onto her mouth. This time she lets it stay. “If you want to woo me, bard, you’ll have to put some proper effort into it.”

Jaskier smiles back at her.

“I’ll give you the handkerchief next time,” he says, wiggling under one of Geralt’s arms. “Blue. To match my eyes. Oh! That reminds me…”

He levers himself to his feet, pulling Geralt up with him. Yen ducks under Geralt’s other arm, so that he can balance on both of them. It’s much easier this way, even as his legs shake beneath him, confused now that they’re under his own power.

“Before we go outside,” Jaskier says. “We have something we’d like to show you. Is that alright?”

Warmth blooms in Geralt’s chest. He gets the feeling that Jaskier’s going to be asking him that question a lot, making up for six years—no, a century—of nonexistent decisions.

“Yeah,” he says, turning his gaze to his feet as they shuffle forward. He feels clumsy, unsteady as a newborn fawn, but he’s _walking on his own._ He’s choosing where he goes, and eventually his legs will be strong enough to carry him anywhere. To every beautiful place he’s ever wanted to linger.

The world is his.

He has to hold in another round of sobbing at that realization.

They stop near the entrance of the tent. Jaskier strokes his fingers over Geralt’s shoulder.

“Look up,” he murmurs in Geralt’s ear.

Geralt does. His eyes trace over the legs of Yen’s vanity, up past its surface, and settle on the ornate mirror that crowns it.

His breath catches in his throat.

It’s almost like that time in the bath, when Jaskier had cut his hair and shown him the result. He’s just as skinny, just as haunted looking. The curse has left its marks in the hollows of his face, the dark circles under his eyes, his shorn hair (and he can grow it out now, long and beautiful, just like he wants. He’ll never have to take a knife to it again). He looks like hell, to put it bluntly. And he knows it’ll take a long, long time to reclaim his body fully.

But there’s one difference.

“Thralls tend to leave a mark,” Yen says. “A brand, almost. Claiming ownership. It’s disgusting, but…well, now that the thrall’s gone—”

“So’s the brand,” Geralt breathes.

He watches the man in the mirror as his eyes—his warm, _brown_ eyes—fill up with tears.

“I look human,” he says, blinking them away. He’s not, he knows. He can still feel the witcher strength in his muscles, the witcher sharpness to his senses. But the outside world will never know the difference. He can shed all those years on the Path as easily as an old, unfitting coat.

“You do,” Jaskier says, turning to press a kiss into his temple. “You are. If you want to be.”

No more White Wolf, no more Butcher of Blaviken, no more Geralt of Rivia, wolf witcher. Just him. Just them.

“I do,” he says. “I do. I— _fuck,_ I’m crying again.”

“Called it,” Yen laughs. “You can cry all you want. But let’s do it outside, okay? The sun should be setting.”

He nods, tearing his gaze away from the mirror, and lets them help him outside. Just as they cross the threshold, Yen snaps her fingers.

“No reason we shouldn’t be comfortable,” she says, as her bed materializes on the hard rock. Jaskier grins.

“No roughing it with a sorceress, huh?” he says.

“Never.”

The world is beautiful like this, all gold and orange light filtering over the gray rocks, swallowing up the sky from horizon to horizon. He pauses, craning back his head to stare up at the dusky purple clouds, at the deep gray-blue of the sky beyond them. Already, a few stars have started to come out, bright enough now to outshine the dying sun.

“Want to go lie down?” Jaskier asks. His voice is getting shaky again. “Look at it properly?”

“Yeah,” Geralt says, and lets them lead him to the bed (and there’s a slight thrill, at the idea of what _else_ they could lead him to a bed for, but later. Later. There have been too many tears and too much guilt for that, tonight).

The bed is warm and soft as he sinks down onto it, his sore muscles grateful for the relief. Jaskier and Yen are softer. Now that they’re no longer pressed into his sides, no longer keeping him upright, he can see the way that the light glints off of Yen’s hair, making it shine like gold-threaded obsidian. He can see the way that it sparkles in Jaskier’s eyes, can see the way it paints them both as the shining, beautiful things that they are.

It’s enough to drag his attention away from the sky.

“I love you,” he says, finally, _finally,_ out loud.

They look at him like he’s as precious as they are.

They whisper his words back to him, and curl up on either side of him, pressing kisses into his jaw and onto his lips, stroking fingers through his hair, letting him drink up the warmth of the sun and their skin both. They don’t go any further than that, but it is enough. Right now, it is enough to kiss them back with his own lips, touch them with his own hands, tell them of their beauty with his own voice.

It is enough to feel their eyes on him as he watches the stars come out. It is enough to let them wipe away his tears as the night grows darker and the constellations grow more beautiful. To follow Jaskier’s finger as he traces out his stories in the sky. To follow Yen’s past as she tells them of what she learned in Aretuza, about chaos streaking across the sky and creating new planets, about leftover dust from colliding spheres dancing between the stars.

It is enough to be happy, truly happy, for the first time since he was a child.

It is enough to just _be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI I have also posted a short little [AU of an AU](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26869366), in which Geralt got a bit more magic from his mom, and that magic really didn't take kindly to the curse. Unfortunately for Geralt, his magic started fighting immediately after the trials....and we all know how the curse reacts to being fought against. So if you want some angst with no happy ending, go check it out! I'm considering writing a follow up to it at some point, after this story is done of course, so lmk if you'd be interested in that.


	9. your albatross, shoot it down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....three weeks instead of two.  
> ...  
> ...  
> ...I blame the election 
> 
> Anyway! CW for this chapter: discussion about previous dubcon between Yen and Geralt (i.e. the two of them having sex under the curse's influence). If you want to skip that, you can just skip the entire first section of this chapter up to the asterisks.

Geralt wakes feeling warm and boneless, every muscle loosened by comfort. He’s lying on something soft, covered by blankets, and it almost feels like arms are cradling him, keeping him close. It’s an illusion, he knows, his mind giving him some small amount of mercy, letting him believe that he’s safe. But he lets himself indulge in it, lets himself breathe in the sweet, fresh air. Not like he can go anywhere else anyway, not when the curse has decided he should be sleeping.

And then one of the arms shifts with a sleepy mumble and a nose nuzzles into Geralt’s chest. And he remembers.

He almost starts crying—for the hundredth time it feels like—at the memory of yesterday. The memory that he’s _free_ and safe, _actually_ safe, and surrounded by the warmth of the two people he loves more than anything. But he forces the tears back. He wants to take in this moment properly, without tears blurring his vision and snot clogging his nose.

He opens his eyes.

The air is lightening, a soft dusky purple that settles over the black silhouettes of the mountains like a blanket. He sits up, drawing two half-awake mumbles of protest, and leans against the headboard, staring out over the horizon.

It’s quiet. _Still._ For the first time in a long time he can just sit, awake, and look at the world around him. His legs don’t spring out of the bed to drag him to another monster, his hands don’t occupy themselves with polishing his armor. He’s just a man, sitting between his lovers and watching the sky change from violet to pink as the sun peeps over the horizon.

His breath freezes in his throat. It’s so—it’s _so beautiful._ He’d forgotten just how _beautiful_ the world could be. Is. How beautiful the world is, beyond the scope of his bloody, painful, controlled not-life.

And now he’s part of the world again. Part of that beauty.

He watches the sunrise until the mountain silhouettes come alive in the distance, their faces gleaming gold. And then a soft sound distracts him. He turns away from the sight to see Yen, her chin propped up on one arm, staring up at him. There are tears gathering in her eyes, but she blinks them away as she sits up, pressing her torso against his.

“What’s wrong?” he asks her.

“Your face is so open,” she murmurs, tracing her fingers over his jaw. “So _happy._ It’s just—”

She ducks her head, worrying at her lip.

“I never really knew you,” she whispers. “Did I?”

His heart goes cold in his chest, the beauty going out of him in a heartbeat. He feared that this might come. That Yen might realize she’d spent six years with someone—something—that wasn’t _him,_ that he wasn’t the person she cared about. That he was, to her, a stranger.

“You didn’t,” he admits, ready for her to get up, to conjure a portal and run far away from him. “But you can now.”

“I can’t believe you’d _let_ me. After all those times,” she snarls, her voice thick with—loathing? Anger? “All those times that we kissed, all those times we _fucked,_ it—it wasn’t you. You weren’t in control, you didn’t— _you_ didn’t say yes, and I—”

Oh.

“Hey,” he breathes, stroking his fingers over her chin. “It wasn’t your fault. I’ll keep saying that until you believe me. It _wasn’t.”_

“How can you say that?”

She leans away from him, the loathing growing even stronger in her voice.

“How can you even touch me, when I practically—”

He cuts her off before she can say the word.

“You didn’t.”

He reaches down. Takes her hand.

“Those times with you, they were—they were some of the few bright spots in my life. Some of the only times I felt like a person at all. And I know the way it happened wasn’t—ideal. The curse was so perfunctory about it all. Just another thing to keep suspicion away. That’s not—it’s not the kind of lover I am. Not the kind of lover I want to be, at least.”

He hesitates, not sure if he should admit his awfuler thoughts around Yen and sex. But if he doesn’t, he suspects it’ll fester, just like the wound in his leg. Fester and rot and destroy something between them before it can properly bloom.

“And I was scared,” he whispers. She makes a small, horrified noise and he shakes his head. “Not of you. I was constantly, _constantly_ thinking about what would happen if you wanted to stop and it just…didn’t.”

She squeezes his hand. Looks at him, strong and steady. Letting him gather his words together.

“I love you, and I don’t blame you, but I don’t think—” he tries, and then stops. “I don’t… _want_ to have sex, not right now. Not for a while. I want—I want to get used to being in control, first. Is that—?”

“If you ask me whether or not that’s okay, I _will_ portal right out of here,” she snarls. Then, gentler, “of _course._ I need some time too, I think. Looking back on it, knowing it wasn’t you…I need to get its smile out of my head. Replace it with yours.”

Relief crashes over him, and he slips an arm around her back, holding her close to him. She’s not leaving him. She sighs, her breath ghosting over his clavicle.

“I might not know you as much as you know me,” she says, skimming her fingers over his spine. “But from what I do know—from Rinde, from what I heard in your head, from the way you watch the sky—you’re a person worth loving, Geralt of Rivia. And maybe it’s hasty, maybe it’s stupid, maybe it makes me a dewy-eyed maiden from one of the bard’s fairytales, but…I’d burn down the world for a chance to keep that love.”

“You don’t have to.”

She goes still against him. Sniffs into his shirt.

“No,” she says. “I suppose I don’t.”

Beside them, there’s a low groan. Jaskier rolls over, squinting up at them bleary-eyed.

“You look really pretty with brown eyes,” he mumbles, and Geralt’s heart warms all over again. He wonders if it’ll feel this way every time Jaskier looks at him like that, or if it’ll wear off. Then Jaskier frowns, his brow scrunching up in confusion.

“Did something happen?” he asks.

Yen laughs, scrubbing her eyes with the sleeve of her dress.

“I’ll tell you later,” she says. “You’re a heavy sleeper.”

“S’ how I made it through university alive,” Jaskier yawns, stretching out his arms. “Right then. What do you say about getting off this mountain?”

Kaer Morhen is waiting not five days away, and with the chill of winter settling in the air, Geralt is sure that his brothers and father will be making their ways home now. The family that he hasn’t seen in six long years, ever since the curse took over entirely, refusing to allow him a break, warmth, comfort from his family.

They must think him dead.

He stares down at his legs. He _will_ get off this fucking mountain even if they shake every step of the way.

“Sounds like a plan,” he says, and lets his lovers help him out of the bed.

***

They walk back and forth across their campsite for hours, letting Geralt get used to controlling his own limbs. At first, he needs both of them to take almost his full weight on their shoulders, panting under his arms as he stares down at his shuffling feet.

“It’s good for my constitution,” Jaskier says when Geralt expresses worry at the color of his face, when he tries to insist that he doesn’t need the help. “And my muscles.”

Yen just rolls her eyes.

“You _do_ need the help,” she says. “But maybe our shoulders don’t need to break…mind if I put a lightening spell on you?”

He nods, that small bit of warmth blooming in his chest again. He knows that Yen doesn’t often ask about things like this, that she would rather let her spells speak for themselves. But she’s being—careful around him. Gentle, in a way. And though part of him screams that he doesn’t need it, most of him relishes being taken care of.

“Go for it,” he says, and she waves her hand. Instantly, his body feels lighter, more fluid. Like he’s floating, almost. His next step is far less shaky. The next, even less so.

“I don’t think I could hold this all the way down the mountain,” she says. “But I should be able to reduce it gradually, over the next few hours.”

He nods, and they’re back to walking. Walking, walking, walking, his steps growing more and more sure. Thank all the gods, his muscles at least know what they’re doing, even if his brain has forgotten. It’s more a matter of trusting his legs than anything else.

Jaskier slips out from underneath one shoulder, leaving him supported only on one side. And then, a little while later, Yen stops him. Rests a hand against the arm over her shoulders.

“Ready?” she asks.

Geralt looks out over the wide expanse of rock. His legs twitch beneath him, unsure. Waiting. He can practically taste the world on his tongue. 

“Yeah.”

He lifts his arm up, over her head. And then he’s standing unsupported. He wobbles back and forth on his feet, still not fully used to all the minute muscle adjustments needed to keep his weight evenly distributed. But he steadies himself. Takes a deep breath.

One step. Another. Another, another, another.

He laughs, before he can stop himself. It’s short and bright and has Jaskier cheering, pumping his fists in the air. Yen shakes her head beside him, an amused grin flickering over her face.

He grins back and keeps walking, feeling himself growing heavier by degrees as Yen loosens the spell. When the sun is high in the sky she darts up to him, places a hand on his arm.

“That’s it,” she says. “Full gravity.”

He still doesn’t feel as graceful as he once was, isn’t confident that he could run or twirl or fight just yet. But he’s steady enough to get down the mountain.

“Let’s get you home,” Yen says.

***

There’s someone waiting for him at the bottom of the mountain.

Someone he owes an apology.

He stumbles away from Yen and Jaskier as soon as she’s in sight, moving as fast as his still shaky legs will take him. Roach perks up her head, body tensing as he comes closer. She has long learned not to trust the thing wearing her person’s body, and Geralt prays that he’ll be able to teach her that he’s himself again.

“Hey girl,” he whispers, holding out his hand for her to inspect, shivering as she blows hot air over his palm. “I’m so sorry.”

He shifts his hand to stroke over her muzzle, her forehead. All he wants to do is collapse against her neck, but he doesn’t want to scare her. He’s already scared her enough. She sniffs at him, nostrils flaring, and lips at his hair.

“I know,” he tells her, keeping his voice soft and gentle. “It’s ugly short, huh? Don’t worry, I’m gonna grow it back out. And then you can chew at it all you want. I won’t snap at you, or push you away, or switch you ever again, okay? I promise.”

He strokes a hand over her neck.

“I _promise.”_

Her right foot paws at the ground as she snuffles at him. Then the left. And then she’s prancing in place, _dancing,_ almost, ears flicking forward eagerly.

She hasn’t done this in _years._

He grins so that he doesn’t cry, pats her neck one last time.

“I’m eager to run too,” he says.

He turns around. Jaskier is swiping another purple handkerchief over his eyes. Yen is biting her lip, her eyes glimmering with warmth.

“Roach missed you,” Jaskier manages to choke out. “Didn’t she?”

“Curse didn’t have to act like me around her,” Geralt says. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t kind to her.”

Jaskier closes his eyes.

“I _will_ find whoever created it,” he says. “And I don’t care if they’re the most powerful mage on the Continent, I’ll—I’ll—"

“Whatever you’re planning to do, you’ll need a horse to get there,” Yen says, holding out a hand for her own beast to inspect. “The Reavers left plenty. Take your pick.”

Jaskier blinks.

“I can’t just—”

“You can, and you should. Come now, you’ve travelled with a witcher for twenty years, tried to control a djinn, and ran towards a fight with nothing but a lute. _And_ you insulted a lady’s honor. Don’t tell me thievery from a dead man is beneath you.”

Jaskier snorts, and gathers the halter of a shockingly docile gray mare. His eyes are still red but he no longer seems on the verge of another breakdown. Which was, Geralt realizes, exactly Yen’s intention.

“Well, when you put it that way,” he says. “I’ve already committed the worst sin of all, if I’ve insulted you. What’s a little robbery?”

“Exactly.”

With a wave of her hand, her horse is fully tacked.

“Kaer Morhen?” she asks.

Geralt smiles at her, picking up Roach’s saddle. He wants to take care of his old friend with his own two hands.

“Kaer Morhen,” he confirms.

***

By the end of their journey, most of the joy from the mountain has—not _faded,_ not exactly. He still gets that same shiver of awe at night, watching the stars. That same burst of love when Yen and Jaskier ask his opinions on things—this a good place to stop? Rabbit or jerky for dinner? Sleep now or listen to a few songs?

And the sheer, unrelenting wonder at his own freedom? The _shock_ he feels in moments when he reaches out and plucks an apple from a nearby tree, just to taste its sweetness on his tongue, the moments when he taps his fingers on the ground in time to Jaskier’s music, just to feel more connected to it, the moments when he nudges Roach into a canter, just to feel the wind on his face. That will never fade, he’s sure of it.

But it’s covered over by a mounting dread, a nausea that churns his stomach whenever they’re not moving. Because his family is still fucking _trapped._ And he has no idea what might have happened to them over the past six years. He’s relatively sure that his closest brothers—the only three who could bear to come back to Kaer Morhen over the winters—were never taken over completely. If they had been, they would’ve kept clear of the mountain, just like Geralt’s curse had.

But what if they’d fallen under since? What if they’d _died_ since, what if Geralt comes back to three more graves and three more wraiths and—

“Breathe, love,” Jaskier whispers in his ear, when he wakes up gasping from nightmares for the third night in a row. “Breathe. It’s okay, you’re okay. They’ll be okay.”

He can’t know that, any more than Geralt can. Nonetheless, Geralt clings to the reassurance like a child clinging to a favorite stuffed toy. It’s the only thing stopping him from slipping into sheer panic.

Still. They sleep less and less as the days go on, travel more and more. His lovers chasing his horror back home.

***

When Kaer Morhen appears in the distance, his panic coalesces like a punch to the gut, knocking the air out of him. Jaskier puts his hand on his back, leaning in close and offering up his warmth.

And he doesn’t say _you’re okay_ or _they’ll be okay._ Instead he says, “we’ll make it okay.”

Action, a purpose, held out for him to take.

He breathes. Nods. Swallows down his panic for later, when his family is safe. Squeezes Roach’s sides and beckons her onward.

Yen slips to his other side, her magic crackling at the surface of her skin, so close that Geralt can feel the electricity in his teeth. She raises her chin, and her eyes seem to glow in the evening light. He remembers the last time her eyes looked like that, while she was battling his own curse, ready and willing to fight it to the death. He shivers.

“You’ll be safe?” he asks her. He doesn’t know if his wish was a one-time use, if it’ll draw them back from death’s grip a second time. And he doesn’t want to risk them.

“Now that I know how much energy this thing takes,” she says. “Yes. We can take them out into the woods, draw energy from the plants. Or…does Kaer Morhen have any livestock?”

“Sheep. Some cows.”

“That’ll work just as well,” she nods. “Any living thing will work as a conduit. I should’ve thought about that for you, but…” She ducked her head. “I wanted it out of you. Got sloppy.”

It takes something out of her to admit that, so he doesn’t push. Just nods, and turns back to face the castle.

“It’s beautiful,” Jaskier murmurs.

And it is. All high, sharp towers and high, sharp forests, haunted and grand and eerie looking. A place where Geralt chased bumblebees through the fields with Eskel, where he won his first hand of Gwent, where he learned just how strong he could be.

Where he had his humanity and his choices and his _life_ stripped from him at the tender age of twelve.

He both wants to curl up at the hearth and never leave, and flee far away and never come back. 

“I know,” he says simply, and they descend into the valley.

***

The place smells like life when they reach the courtyard, like roasting meat and chimney smoke and animal shit—cows must’ve been brought in from the pasture, or they’re sheering the sheep. Which means there’s at least one person back, probably more.

“They’re here,” Geralt murmurs, swinging himself off Roach. He pats her neck. “Ready?”

Yen nods, her magic growing even thicker in the air. Before Geralt can even turn towards the door though, it’s swinging open behind him.

A choked gasp.

“Geralt?”

_Vesemir._

“You’re _alive.”_

His voice is thick with emotion. But not tears. Of course not. He isn’t _allowed_ to cry. Geralt gives himself a moment, just one, to be furious. Furious and heartbroken and ready to rip the world to shreds for what it did to his father.

And then he turns around.

Vesemir’s golden eyes meet his brown ones. His face flickers—relief melting into confusion. And then. Then into something much flatter, much colder, much more empty. His hand drops to his side.

“Yen,” Geralt whispers.

He doesn’t get another word in. Yen doesn’t even get her hands up. Vesemir— _not Vesemir—_ lunges forward before she gets a chance. There’s a flash of silver in his hand.

Geralt moves just in time. Or just…just _not_ in time.

The knife buries itself in his shoulder instead of his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One!! More!! Chapter to go!! (possibly followed by a mega-soft, mega-sappy epilogue) Y'all excited?


	10. stepping forward out into the day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's HEREEEEEEE. The last ~proper~ chapter of the fic! This has been such a wild ride, and thank you so, so, SO much for all the support. The amount of comments I've been getting on each chapter is truly amazing, I've never had such a great reception on any of my works before. Y'all have really made me excited to write and post this.
> 
> Next chapter is gonna be a mega sappy epilogue set about ten years post the events of this story, so stay tuned if you like unrepentant fluff.
> 
> Thanks again <3

It’s the curse. Geralt _knows_ it’s the curse. And yet the first emotion that rushes through him is betrayal. Shock, that his father would do such a thing. He tries to force that feeling down, to keep it off his face. Vesemir doesn’t need to see that, not when Geralt knows he must be screaming in his head already.

But he can feel the muscles in his face bunching and twisting, can see the world growing blurry as his eyes fill up with tears. And he can’t stop the soft sound of _hurt_ that bursts from his mouth. Maybe his emotions are like walking. They’ve been controlled _for_ him for so long that he doesn’t know how to control them himself.

He stumbles backwards, hand clutching at his shoulder, as Yennefer flies into action. Magic spills over Vesemir’s skin, locking his muscles tight. It curls over his face, slipping down his nose, forcing him to breathe even as the curse tries to halt his lungs.

“It’s okay,” Geralt says, his voice wavering with pain. _Fuck._ He swallows, tries again, drawing strength from his loves. This time, his words come out steadier. “It’s okay. Yen was able to break the curse on me. She can help you too.”

He steps closer, his shoulder burning, blood trickling down his arm. He ignores it. He is still a witcher in flesh, if not in mind. They were built to work with broken parts.

“You’re gonna be free,” he says. “We’re all gonna be free.”

Vesemir’s curse spits in his face. Another jolt of pointless betrayal rushes through him.

“Gods, your shoulder,” Jaskier murmurs, flitting to Geralt’s side. His hands hover over the wound. “Fuck, Yen, can you—”

“We should get into the woods first,” Yen says. Her brow is furrowed though, and there’s a slight crease at the corner of her lips that she gets whenever she has to choose between two horrible options. She puts her hand on Geralt’s uninjured shoulder, a silent offering of strength. “Before any of the others come to see what the commotion is about.”

Geralt nods. The forest isn’t far. They just need to make it back out the gate, really. It’ll be fine. He’s walked with worse.

_Because you’ve been made to. Even when you thought you had control, you were made to. You’ve never had to be strong on your own, not really._

He grits his teeth.

“I’ll be fine,” he says. A stab wound is nothing compared to what Vesemir’s going through right now. He straightens his spine and turns around. “We should be quick. Lambert’s nosy as hell.”

_Is he? Is he really? Do you really know your family at all?_

Yen flicks her fingers and Vesemir trails behind them as they swing the gate open and walk back out into the woods. Jaskier keeps a hand on Geralt’s arm the whole time, his eyes flicking from the wound to Vesemir and back again.

Sweat beads on the back of Geralt’s neck despite the chill of the air around them. The world feels too bright and too dim at the same time, like he’s staring directly into the sun from behind a veil. He swallows back a mouthful of spit and nausea, his gut churning.

His foot hits a root and he stumbles, his still-waking muscles unable to catch him in time, sending him sprawling into the snow. The knife jostles in his shoulder and he screams, his vision growing even fuzzier.

He can hear voices, frantic, snapping back and forth, and then the snow crunches as Yen kneels down next to him.

“Here’s fine,” she says, her hand skimming lightly over the wound. Geralt bites down on his lip, refusing to let himself whimper. “We’re far enough away from the keep.”

“Help Vesemir,” he manages to grit out. “I’m alright.”

“So the self-sacrificing thing _is_ a part of your personality,” Yen mutters, spreading snow over his skin, leaving blissful numbness in its wake. Or no—it’s far too strong to be snow. Magic. “That’s good to know.”

Something _shifts_ inside his shoulder, not painful but… _wrong_ feeling, the feeling of a muscle tugged just the wrong way, the feeling of a parasite shifting. Yen swears under her breath.

“That’s a long knife,” Jaskier says faintly. “And it’s bloody up to the crossguard, _shit,_ how bad—?”

“Bad,” Yen says. More magic rushes over the wound.

“You’ll live,” she reassures Geralt. “I managed to stop the bleeding and close up the wound. But you won’t be fighting with that arm any time soon.”

“Don’t wanna fight anyway,” Geralt manages to say through gritted teeth. 

He gets his good arm under him and forces himself into a seated position, shivering as the snow bites through his clothes. Gods, the fireplace in the great hall has never sounded so appealing.

“I’m okay,” he says, trying to smile for Vesemir’s sake. “I’m okay, I promise.”

“You’re really not,” Jaskier says, hovering awkwardly next to him. He picks at Geralt’s bloodied shirt. “Melitele’s tits, can you even lift your arm?”

 _“Jaskier,”_ Yen hisses. She jerks her chin at Vesemir, who’s still glaring at them like he’s willing them all to drop dead. 

Jaskier closes his eyes, pain flashing across his face.

“Right,” he says, forcing his voice high and optimistic. “You’ll be just fine. With the potions and the magic and everything. Be right as rain.”

Geralt drags himself to his feet, Jaskier squawking in protest. He stumbles over to Vesemir, step by shaking step. His bad leg seems to flare in time with his shoulder, both throbbing along with his heartbeat.

He stops, staring into Vesemir’s eyes, looking for—something. Some hint of pain, desperation, _fear_. Everything that swamped him when he was a prisoner, so much horror that he was sure there must be _some_ outer sign of it. A flicker of agony.

There’s nothing at all. Just the rage that the curse has painted over his face.

“Do you want to talk to him?” Yen asks, taking Geralt’s hand. She brings her other hand up to cup Vesemir’s cheek.

“Just for a moment,” Geralt murmurs. He doesn’t want to delay Vesemir’s freedom any more than necessary.

Yen squeezes his hand, tight and sure, an anchor in a storm. And then she reaches into Vesemir’s mind and connects them.

Panic surges into Geralt instantly, panic and horror and guilt so deep he thinks he might drown in it. He nearly lets go of Yen’s hand, nearly falls to the ground and retches from the sheer force of the emotions.

And then the words come.

_Geralt? Geralt, oh gods, I’m so sorry, I’m **so** sorry, I don’t know why it made me—_

“It’s not your fault,” Geralt says and gods, his voice sounds broken to his own ears. “It’s _not.”_

_I tried to fight it, I haven’t—I haven’t tried to fight it in **years,** but I tried then, and it just—_

“I know,” Geralt says. “I know. It made me try to kill Yen, when she realized. It’s—it’s like a trapped animal, I think. Lashing out because it knows we’ve come to kill it.”

_You can—can you really—?_

Hope floods the connection, bathing him in warmth from head to toe.

“They freed me,” Geralt says, and gods, he wants to hug Vesemir, but he doesn’t want Yen puppeting his arms to hug him back. So instead, he reaches forward and clasps a hand on Vesemir’s shoulder.

_That’s—gods, that’s—_

Something shivers through Yen’s hand, and Geralt thinks it might be crying. That Vesemir might be sobbing in his head.

_I can’t even imagine. I’ve—it’s been so long._

“What stage of the curse are you in?” Yen asks, her voice gentle but urgent.

_Stage?_

“You knew it was there, clearly. How much has it been controlling you?”

_It hasn’t been. Not for—not for years. It did a lot, when I was younger, but I realized it was getting worse and worse and—when it had me, I couldn’t be there for my kids._

Shame covers his thoughts, thick and oily as kikimora blood, dripping off every word.

_It made me ignore them. It made me berate them. It wouldn’t let me comfort the trainees when they cried, it wouldn’t let me hug the older ones when they got back from the Path. And I couldn’t live with that version of myself._

Another shiver, another sob.

_So I stopped fighting. I did what it wanted me to do, so I could hold on to some part of myself. And I brought boys back to the keep—I brought **you** back to the keep—and I let this happen to you, too._

“You didn’t ‘let’ anything happen,” Geralt says. “You—you gave me a _father,_ Ves. If it had taken you completely, if you had been some cold, perfect witcher, I don’t—I wouldn’t have survived my childhood. You know that.”

_Or it would’ve had me go down a different road that day. And I never would’ve found you—_

“And then I would’ve died on the side of the road. Or been picked up by someone much worse.”

He leans forward, knocking his forehead against Vesemir’s. Closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the sneer on his face.

“It _wasn’t_ your fault. And I’m glad that you stayed yourself. I’m glad that you weren’t—”

He stops. He still doesn’t quite have the words to describe what was done to him. He doesn’t think he will for years.

_…where were you the past six years?_

Dread coils through the connection.

“We should be worrying about freeing you,” Yen says, but Vesemir’s concern continues unabated.

_Where? Where were you, why didn’t you come home? I thought—we all thought you were dead, but if you weren’t—Geralt, **what happened?**_

“…it got me,” Geralt whispers, keeping his eyes closed. “I fought it. And it—it took me over, and it didn’t let me go.”

_No. No, gods **no,** little wolf—_

The old nickname unlocks something in Geralt’s chest, and he can’t stop the tears from slipping loose, can’t stop them from rolling down his cheeks.

 _Six years,_ Vesemir thinks. _Six years, you were trapped for six years and I—I didn’t look for you, I didn’t **help** you, I—_

“You couldn’t have done anything,” Yen says, her voice as somber as an undertaker’s at a funeral. “That’s the whole point of this _thing_. But you can be there for him now. Just as he’s here for you.”

She squeezes Geralt’s hand again, running her thumb over his knuckles.

“Shall I get to work?” she asks them. “It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to draw the sigils.”

_Yes. **Yes,** please, I want—_

Images flicker in his mind so quickly that Geralt can barely catch them. Vesemir, throwing his arms around Geralt, tugging Lambert and Eskel in close, shedding off his armor and throwing his medallion into the sea. Sitting on a cliff overlooking the Morhen valley, his boys at his side, and breathing in the summer air.

Geralt opens his eyes, stares into Vesemir’s furious face. Looking for some sign of that peace.

_I want to be free._

“And you will be,” Yen says. She pats Vesemir’s cheek one last time, and then drops her hand. “It won’t be a moment.”

She reaches into the pocket of her dress and pulls out a pouch of purple pigment.

“Won’t the snow get all fucked up?” Jaskier asks, clutching the strap of his lute like it’s a baby blanket. “I mean, one wrong footstep, and—”

Yen scoffs as she traces a circle in the snow. She lifts her boot off the ground and stomps down, hard. It clacks down onto the snow as though it was solid stone.

“You really think a sorceress would let a stray footstep ruin her spell?” she asks, drawing the next glyph. “You think so little of me.”

“Or I just have more to learn,” Jaskier says, waggling his eyebrows. Geralt groans, although warmth floods his stomach at the sight of the two of them together.

“How long must I deal with you two flirting?” he asks.

“How long do humans live?” Yen asks drily.

“Whoever said I was human?” Jaskier shoots back.

Yen pauses in her glyph work, blinking rapidly as she turns to face Jaskier.

“Did you know about this?” she asks Geralt. Geralt shakes his head, and there’s something like awe rushing through him, wonder at the fact that he’ll get to _keep this,_ he’ll get to keep this forever if he doesn’t fuck it up.

“What, _really?”_ Jaskier squawks. “Geralt, I’m _hardly subtle—"_

“Later,” Yen says. She points at Jaskier. “We _will_ be talking about this later, but for now, let me focus on the curse.”

She pours more pigment out, tracing down the sigil in great sweeping movements of her arm, murmuring softly under her breath as she works. Geralt catches snatches of words in Elder: _heal, rescue, banish._

_Free._

One last flourish of her hand, and Yen sits back on her heals. She crooks her finger at Vesemir and he steps forward, his motions unnaturally smooth and even. Geralt shivers. Is that what he had moved like, under her power? Under the power of the curse? More perfect than a human could ever hope to be?

A snap of Yen’s fingers and Vesemir lies down in the snow, his gray hair almost blending in with it, his eyes still flaming with hatred. Yen kneels down at the outer edge of the circle and digs her fingers into the snow, not even seeming to notice the cold.

“What are you doing?” Jaskier says, leaning forward to get a better look.

“The whole forest is connected through the soil,” she says, when she’s cleared enough snow away to lay her hand flat on the ground. “Reach the soil and you can reach the root system, which lets you draw energy from every tree around you.”

“You’re not about to kill the whole valley, are you?”

“No,” Yen says, closing her eyes. “Now shut up, bard, I need to concentrate.”

She begins to chant, the words flowing off her tongue like a river over an ancient groove in the stone, smooth and practiced. The wind whips around them, sending the snow flying into the air, cutting against Geralt’s cheek. Jaskier yelps, holding his lute against his chest, staring at Yen with blown-out, fearful eyes. Like he’s expecting her to collapse at any minute. The trees creak and moan around them, their branches dancing wildly in the wind.

And then, another noise. Almost imperceptible through the howl of Yen’s chaos.

_“Fuck, fuck, fuck, what are they doing to him, I told you something was wrong—"_

Lambert’s voice, thready with fear. Two sets of footsteps crunching through the snow, moving their way very fast. _Shit._

Geralt slams his eyes shut.

“Yen, they’re coming,” he says, ducking his head down. “Lambert and Eskel, they’re heading this way.”

 _“Fuck,”_ she snarls. “Okay. Okay, I can immobilize them too, I just need more—”

The crashing of branches. The pounding of hearts.

“Get _away_ from him, you fucking witch,” Lambert snarls. “I don’t know what the hell you’re playing at, but you’re gonna—”

“Geralt?”

Eskel sounds much like Vesemir had. Hopeful and disbelieving and on the verge of tears that he isn’t allowed to cry. But there’s something else, just as powerful as all of that. Horror. Rage. _Fear._

A sharp inhale and Lambert is growling again.

“You took him?” he shouts. “You took him, and now you think you can take the old man too, huh, is that it? You think you can hunt us down in our home?”

“No,” Jaskier babbles. “No, no, that’s not it at all, you have it all—”

“Oh, another kidnapper,” Lambert drawls. “Wonderful, my sword skills have been getting _rusty_ this winter.”

“I didn’t kidnap him!” Jaskier shrieks, his footsteps stumbling towards Geralt. Geralt resists the urge to open his eyes, to jump between Jaskier and his brothers. That would just make their curses turn their rage on him, and with a bad arm and a bad leg, there’s no way he’d be able to fight them off.

And he didn’t come this far to be murdered by his family.

“Geralt?” Eskel whispers again. Warm, familiar hands cup Geralt’s chin, tilting it upwards. “Geralt, why aren’t you—please open your eyes.”

“I can’t,” Geralt says, bringing up a hand to rest it on top of Eskel’s. “I can’t, but I’m _fine,_ Esk, really. They didn’t—”

“What, did you _blind_ him too, you bastard?” Lambert spits.

“Yen, any time now would be _great,”_ Jaskier says, with another flurry of stumbling footsteps.

 _“Please,_ Geralt,” Eskel says, and his hands are shaking against Geralt’s face. Geralt shakes his head. His tongue feels like it’s full of knots. The situation is spiraling out of control around him and he doesn’t know what—

“I didn’t want to do this,” Eskel mutters, and then—

Then—

There’s something pressing into his mind, warm and weighty, dragging through his limbs and binding them up in its wake. It’s _familiar,_ this sensation of something invading him, something locking away his mind and forcing its own will through his body. All thought flees him. All that’s left is raw, animal panic, thrashing against the invader like a fish caught in a net. He thinks he hears himself scream—is it real, is it in his own head, is it—?

“What the fuck are you _doing?”_ Jaskier shrieks.

“Shit, Geralt, just calm down—” and the warmth gets warmer and the weight gets heavier and his struggles are pressed down, down, down.

“Just calm down and open your eyes, that’s it.”

And he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to, he _doesn’t fucking want to,_ but his body belongs to something else, _again,_ and he can’t resist.

His eyes slide open to see Eskel hovering over him, his face open and concerned, his fingers pressed into the familiar sign of Axii. And then that concern morphs into confusion, then _rage,_ and—

He’s floating, drifting, dreaming as Eskel’s fingers tangle in his hair, as Eskel’s other hand comes up glinting silver. He realizes, vaguely, that he’s going to die. That he’s going to die at Eskel’s hand, bleeding out in the snow, his mind a prisoner again.

 _“Yen!”_ Jaskier screams. Yen throws back her head and howls, her magic cracking through the air with the force of a whip, snapping the branches of the trees around them.

The world clicks back into focus.

Eskel stands frozen before him, his fingers still gripping Geralt’s hair like a vice, his dagger hovering inches from Geralt’s throat, poised to slash across it. Whatever Yen had done had shattered his Axii, and Geralt’s mind is—

Geralt is—

Eskel lets go of his hair, and he crumples to the ground, shivering all over. His body isn’t his, his body isn’t his, his body _isn’t fucking his,_ and he can’t—he can’t—he can’t control his lungs—

“Fuck,” Jaskier growls, dropping to his knees in front of Geralt. He takes Geralt’s hands in his, crowds closer so he can look at Geralt’s face.

“What the hell happened?” Yen shouts, puppeting Eskel and Lambert into the sigil.

“He used Axii,” Jaskier says, rubbing circles into the back of Geralt’s hand. Geralt tries to focus on that pressure, the constancy of it, the dryness of Jaskier’s skin. “It’s a witcher sign, it’s—it’s like mind control.”

Yen snarls, stalking forward to grab the front of Eskel’s shirt.

“You’re lucky he cares about you,” she snarls in his face. “Or I’d rip you to shreds for that.”

“Don’t,” Geralt tells his knees. The world is still swimming around him, too close and too heavy, pressing him inwards. “Don’t, it’s—we’re trained to—”

He doesn’t have the words to explain this either. Doesn’t know how to explain the way that they were taught to throw Axii at every panicking human they came across, doesn’t know how to explain the way the curse forced his fingers into that shape so many times. Doesn’t know how to explain how natural it felt, or how horrible.

Yen closes her eyes. Sweat beads across her forehead, her nose, her reddening cheeks.

“Another thing to talk about,” she says. “But now—we need to move quickly. I can’t hold them for long.”

She waves her hand and the two of them lie down in the circle next to Vesemir.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she says. “I’m not going to kidnap you, or enslave you, or whatever you think I did to Geralt. I’m going to get this curse out of you, okay? That’s it, and after that, you’re free to do whatever you like. As long as that doesn’t involve stabbing Geralt.”

“Thanks, Yen,” Geralt mutters. He breathes in time with Jaskier’s circling. _In, out, in. You’re still in control._

“Are you gonna be alright?” Jaskier says, frowning at Yen. “Three at once, it’s—”

“I can do it,” Yen snaps. She puts her hand back down on the ground. “Not the best circumstances, but when is anything for me?”

Jaskier snorts. Lifts Geralt’s hand to his lips.

“What about you, lovely? Are you alright?”

_You’re in control. Your body is yours. Your life is yours._

“Yeah.” His voice sounds raspy. Shaken. But it listens to him. It says what he wants it to. “Yeah, m’okay.”

“Good,” Jaskier says. He sounds almost as shaken. He leans in and presses a kiss to Geralt’s jaw. “Good,” he repeats against his skin.

Yen starts to chant again. The trees toss in the wake of her chaos. She bends over herself, glaring down at the snow covered ground. The purple lines of the sigil flare to life, casting an eerie glow over the three witchers.

 _“Get the fuck out,”_ she bites out through gritted teeth, before resuming her careful Elder.

Geralt squeezes Jaskier’s hand in his, watching the forms of his brothers, too scared to blink. What if three really is too much? What if they break from Yen’s hold?

_Then you’ll die. All of you. And the knowledge of this curse dies with you._

Geralt swallows, holds on harder, and doesn’t blink.

***

It goes on for hours.

***

It goes on for years.

***

But Geralt can _feel_ it, when their curses shatter. It’s a lightening in the air, a sob finally being released. A wrongness bleeding out of the world.

It’s his family, whole again. It’s his family, free.

He can’t stop the laugh that bubbles from his throat.

***

When Yen sits back from the circle, she's drenched head to toe in sweat, and most of the trees in a ten foot radius have crumbled into dust. She kneels there, panting and disheveled and _powerful,_ just as she had after the djinn. And Geralt remembers why he fell for her in the first place.

“Should…be…fine,” she gasps, leaning heavily on her arms. Geralt scrambles away from Jaskier, kicking up flurries of snow in his haste.

“Don’t…you dare….catch me when I faint,” she slurs. “You’re…hurt. Jaskier?”

“Yep, yes, of course.”

He makes it over to her just in time for her to collapse directly into his arms. He swears colorfully, fumbling at her neck.

“Her pulse is fine,” Geralt says. “She’s just asleep. Exhausted.”

“Thank you, bat ears,” Jaskier says, casting a tired smile Geralt’s way. He adjusts Yen in his arms to better support his head. “So—it worked?”

“It worked,” Geralt says. The world seems bright around them, just like it had when he woke up from his own cursebreaking. Bright and new and ready to welcome his family back into it.

“And she’s not even awake for us to shower her in praise,” Jaskier groans. “Well, we should probably figure out a way to get these three back into the keep. You slept for hours after we freed you, and I don’t think they’d appreciate waking up with frostbite.”

“Probably not,” Geralt agrees. “There are sledges in the courtyard, could you—?”

He doesn’t want to leave his family alone and unconscious, where any warg or wolf could stumble across them. Jaskier nods, gathering Yen to his chest as he stands.

“I’ll bring her inside,” he says. “Think she deserves the best spot by the fire.”

“I think you’re right.”

He watches Jaskier as he trudges away through the snow, holding Yen so carefully in his arms. The warm feeling slips into his belly again, and he lets his lips stretch into a smile. They’ll be good together. He thinks he might have made something beautiful, by introducing them.

He thinks that the three of them might make something extraordinary.

He pushes himself to his feet and stumbles over to his brothers, feeling heavier and heavier each step. He sways on his feet as he looks down at them. Their faces are softer than he’s ever seen them. Relaxed, in their magically-induced slumber.

And what things will they make? What things will they create with their lives? What will they build, and see, and love?

He’ll get to find out now.

***

It takes them about an hour to drag all three witchers from the forest to the fireplace. Well, for Jaskier to drag them. Geralt just plods alongside him, shaking his head whenever Jaskier tells him to sit down and rest.

“Need to see this through,” he mutters as he helps arrange Vesemir’s head on the furs. Jaskier’s face softens, and he doesn’t tell Geralt to sit down again.

But then it’s over. His family is laid out in front of the fire, furs piled under and over them. Lambert is snoring slightly. Eskel rolls over with a long sigh. Vesemir’s hand latches on to Lambert’s shoulder. Little wastes of energy that the curse would never allow.

Jaskier tugs him towards a free patch of fur.

“Should be up when they wake,” Geralt mutters.

“I’m sure they’ll be loud enough to wake you,” Jaskier laughs, pulling Geralt down to the floor with him. Geralt goes with a grumble but lets Jaskier pull him close to his chest. Closes his eyes when Jaskier strokes his fingers through his hair.

“They’re safe,” he says in Geralt’s ear. “You’re safe. You can rest now.”

It’s warm. It’s comfortable. And he’s surrounded by the breaths and the heartbeats of the people that he loves.

He’s never fallen asleep so fast.

***

He wakes to sobs.

Lambert is sitting bolt upright, his hand clasped over his mouth to muffle his cries. Geralt is up like a shot, scrambling towards him.

“It’s gone,” Lambert chokes. “It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s— _gods,_ it’s _gone—”_

He tips into Geralt’s arms and buries his face into Geralt’s shoulder, scrabbling at his back.

“It’s _gone,”_ he says again. “I’m—I can—I can _stop—”_

“You can,” Geralt says, rocking back and forth, just like he had done when Lambert was a trainee, shivering after a nightmare. “We all can.”

He remembers Lambert’s anger, his fury at the world, at what he was chosen to become. How many times had the curse punished him for that anger?

“Fuck monsters,” Lambert snarls. “Fuck contracts, fuck the Path, fuck _all of it._ I’m done—I’m _done,_ I’m _done,_ I’m—I’m fucking _free of it.”_

He snarls the words like he’s expecting Geralt to contradict him. But Geralt just lifts his hand to cradle the back of Lambert’s head.

“You are,” he says. “The world is yours. Anything you want from it is yours.”

There’s a groan from Lambert’s other side, and Lambert pulls away from Geralt with a loud sniffle, wiping his nose on his sleeve like the disgusting man he is.

“Hey ‘skel,” he laughs wetly. “We were wrong about that whole kidnapping thing.”

Eskel stares at him in wonder. And then at Geralt. His eyes are just like Geralt remembers from when they were children, big, doe-brown, soft as anything.

“I want…I want to quit being a witcher,” he says very slowly, like he’s expecting the words to freeze in his mouth. “I want to be a farmer instead. Dye and spin my own wool.”

He claps a hand over his mouth.

“Holy _fucking shit.”_

“Right?” Lambert says. He launches himself at Eskel, yanking him into a hug with Geralt.

“We’re free,” he half-laughs, half-sings. “We’re free, we’re free, we’re free. And Geralt’s alive!”

“Geralt’s alive,” Eskel repeats softly. His eyes slide from Geralt’s face to his throat.

“Hey,” Geralt says. “The curse made me do a lot of things I didn’t want to. It’s not your fault.”

“The Axii was,” Eskel mutters.

“Let’s make a pact, then,” Lambert says. “No more Axii. Ever. Anyone uses it, you get your fingers chopped off.”

Eskel smiles, not quite there, and ducks his head.

“Sounds fair,” he says. “No more Axii.”

“No more Axii,” Geralt agrees.

“Definitely not,” Vesemir croaks.

They whirl around as one. Vesemir is propped up on his elbows, smiling at them with the same indulgent grin he’d always given them when they did something right in training.

“Any room for an old man on your farm, Eskel?” he asks, sitting up. Eskel’s smile widens into a proper grin.

“As long as the old man pulls his weight, sure,” he says, holding out an arm. Vesemir slips into place beside him, wrapping his arms around them all.

“We’re free,” Lambert says again. Each time, his wonder at the words seems to grow. “We’re _free,_ oh gods.”

Geralt breathes in the smell of his home. Woodsmoke and fresh pine and the warm, slightly sweaty embrace of his brothers. Chamomile and lilac, curled together, somehow sleeping through the commotion.

“We are,” he whispers.

***

It takes Yen several days to wake, but once she does, she’s all business, leaning against Geralt’s chest like it’s her throne and the hearth is her court.

“I have a few sorceresses I trust,” she says. “I’ll get in contact with them. Hopefully, working together we can reduce the fatigue. In the meantime, you are going to tell me where witchers go to take their contracts.”

“And what are you going to do with that information?” Vesemir asks.

“Impersonate a panicking alderman,” she says. “'Leshen spotted in secluded, out-of-the-way marsh. Witcher needed. Substantial reward.' And then, once this witcher comes to the secluded, out-of-the-way marsh…”

“You break their curse,” Vesemir says. “Not bad.”

“It’ll take a long while,” Eskel frowns. “And there are some schools that are still…semi-operational. Some of the instructors stay there year-round, they won’t be out taking contracts. We’ll need to raid them.”

“And then there’s the _fucking_ cat caravan,” Lambert says. “Good luck getting those bastards to follow you into a dark forest. They trust no one but themselves.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Jaskier says. His eyes are bright with determination. If anything, the challenge seems to fuel him further. “I’m not gonna rest until all of them are free.”

“Nor I,” says Yen, smoothing down her dress.

And the task seems impossible. As daunting as the sheer face of a cliff.

But he has the two of them at his side, so sure that they can beat that impossibility. And he thinks—he thinks they’ll be able to do it.

A world where all witchers walk free. Won't that be something?

“I have an idea of where to start,” he says. Because there’s a place the curse has been running from for the past twelve years. There’s a duty that forced it to control him that first time.

And he has his loves. He has his family. And with his child, he thinks he’ll be able to face the rest of the world. The rest of his life.

“I want to go back to Cintra.”


End file.
